World War II - AP United States History -...

World War II

C H A P T E R

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CHAPTER OUTLINE

THE COMING OF WORLD WAR IIThe Shadows of War

Isolationism

Roosevelt Readies for War

Pearl Harbor

ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACYMobilizing for War

Organizing the Economy

New Workers

THE HOME FRONTFamilies in Wartime

The Internment of Japanese Americans

“Double V”: Victory at Home and Abroad

Zoot-Suit Riots

Popular Culture and “The Good War”

MEN AND WOMEN IN UNIFORMCreating the Armed Forces

Women Enter the Military

Old Practices and New Horizons

The Medical Corps

Prisoners of War

THE WORLD AT WARSoviets Halt Nazi Drive

The Allied Offensive

The Allied Invasion of Europe

The High Cost of European Victory

The War in Asia and the Pacific

THE LAST STAGES OF WARThe Holocaust

The Yalta Conference

The Atomic Bomb�887

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Los Alamos, New Mexico

n Monday, July 16, 1945, at 5:29:45 A.M., MountainWar Time, the first atomic bomb exploded in a bril-liant flash visible in three states. Within just seven min-

utes, a huge, multicolored, bell-shaped cloud soared 38,000 feetinto the atmosphere and threw back a blanket of smoke andsoot to the earth below. The heat generated by the blast wasfour times the temperature at the center of the sun, and the lightproduced rivaled that of nearly twenty suns. Even ten miles awaypeople felt a strong surge of heat. The giant fireball ripped acrater a half-mile wide in the ground, fusing the desert sandinto glass. The shock wave blew out windows in houses more than200 miles away. The blast killed every living creature—squirrels,rabbits, snakes, plants, and insects—within a mile, and the smellsof death lingered for nearly a month.

Very early that morning, Ruby Wilkening had driven to anearby mountain ridge, where she joined several other womenwaiting for the blast. Wilkening worried about her husband, aphysicist, who was already at the test site. No one knew exactlywhat to expect, not even the scientists who developed the bomb.

The Wilkenings were part of a unique community of sci-entists who had been marshaled for war. President Franklin D.Roosevelt, convinced by Albert Einstein and other physiciststhat the Nazis might successfully develop an atomic bomb, hadinaugurated a small nuclear research program in 1939. Soonafter the United States entered World War II, the presidentreleased resources to create the Manhattan Project and placedit under the direction of the Army Corps of Engineers. By

December 1942, a team headed by Italian-born Nobel Prizewinner Enrico Fermi had produced the first chain reaction inuranium under the University of Chicago’s football stadium.Now the mission was to build a new, formidable weapon of war,the atomic bomb.

In March 1943, the government moved the key researchersand their families to Los Alamos, New Mexico, a remote andsparsely populated region of soaring peaks, ancient Indian ruins,modern pueblos, and villages occupied by the descendants of theearliest Spanish settlers. Some families occupied a former boys’preparatory school until new houses could be built; others dou-bled up in rugged log cabins or nearby ranches. Construction ofnew quarters proceeded slowly, causing nasty disputes betweenthe “long-hairs” (scientists) and the “plumbers” (army engi-neers) in charge of the grounds. Despite the chaos, outstandingAmerican and European scientists eagerly signed up. Most wereyoung, with an average age of twenty-seven, and quite a few wererecently married. Many couples began their families at LosAlamos, producing a total of nearly a thousand babies between1943 and 1949.

The scientists and their families formed an exceptionallyclose-knit community, united by the need for secrecy and theirshared antagonism toward their army guardians. The militaryatmosphere was oppressive. Homes and laboratories were cor-doned off by barbed wire and guarded by military police.Everything, from linens to food packages, was stamped“Government Issue.” The scientists were followed by securitypersonnel whenever they left Los Alamos. Several scientists werereprimanded for discussing their work at home, although manyof their wives worked forty-eight hours a week in the TechnicalArea. All outgoing mail was censored. Well-known scientistscommonly worked under aliases—Fermi became “EugeneFarmer”—and code names were used for terms such as atom,bomb, and uranium fission. Los Alamos children were registeredwithout surnames at nearby public schools. Even automobileaccidents, weddings, and deaths went unreported. Only a groupthoroughly committed to the war effort could accept such restric-tions on personal liberty.

Los Alamos

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A profound urgency motivated the research team, whichincluded refugees from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and alarge proportion of Jews. The director of the project, Californiaphysicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, promoted a scientific élan thatoffset the military style of commanding general Leslie Groves.Just thirty-eight, slightly built, and deeply emotional, “Oppie”personified the idealism that helped the community of scientistsovercome whatever moral reservations they held about placingsuch a potentially ominous weapon in the hands of the government.

In the Technical Area of Los Alamos, Oppenheimer directedresearch. At seven o’clock each workday morning, the siren dubbed“Oppie’s Whistle” called the other scientists to their laboratoriesto wrestle with the theoretical and practical problems of build-ing an atomic device. From May to November 1944, after thebomb had been designed, the key issue was testing it. Many sci-entists feared a test might fail, scattering the precious plutoniumat the bomb’s core and discrediting the entire project. Finally,with plutonium production increasing, the Los Alamos teamagreed to test “the gadget” at a site 160 miles away.

The unprecedented scientific mobilization at Los Alamosmirrored changes occurring throughout American society as thenation rallied behind the war effort. Sixteen million men andwomen left home for military service and nearly as many movedto take advantage of wartime jobs. In becoming what PresidentFranklin Roosevelt called “a great arsenal of democracy,” the

American economy quickly and fully recovered from the GreatDepression. Several states in the South and Southwest experi-enced huge surges in population. California alone grew by2 million people, a large proportion from Mexico. Many broadsocial changes with roots in earlier times—the economic expan-sion of the West, the erosion of farm tenancy among black peo-ple in the South and white people in Appalachia, and theincreasing employment of married women—accelerated dur-ing the war. The events of the war eroded old communities, cre-ated new ones like Los Alamos, and transformed nearly allaspects of American society.

The transition to wartime was, however, far from smooth.Suspecting Japanese Americans of disloyalty, President Rooseveltordered the forced relocation of more than 112,000 men,women, and children to internment camps. Although AfricanAmericans won a promise of job equity in defense and govern-ment employment, hundreds of race riots broke out in thenation’s cities. In Los Angeles, Mexican American youth, flaunt-ing a new style of dress, provoked the ire of white sailors whoproceeded to assault them, almost at random. And families ofall kinds found themselves strained by wartime dislocations.

The United States nevertheless emerged from World War IIfar stronger than its European allies, who bore the brunt of thefighting. Indeed, the nation was now strong enough to claim anew role as the world’s leading superpower.

WORLD WAR II, 1941–1945 CHAPTER 25 889

The events leading to Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war

The marshaling of national resources for war

American society during wartime

The mobilization of Americans into the armed forces

The war in Europe and Asia

Diplomacy and the atomic bomb

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The Coming of World War II

T he worldwide Great Depression further undermined a political order thathad been shaky since World War I. Production declined by nearly 40 per-cent, international trade dropped by as much as two-thirds, unemployment

rose, and political unrest spread across Europe and Asia. Demagogues played onnationalist hatreds, fueled by old resentments and current despair, and offered solu-tions in the form of territorial expansion by military conquest.

Preoccupied with restoring the domestic economy, President Franklin D.Roosevelt had no specific plan to deal with growing conflict elsewhere in the world.Moreover, the majority of Americans strongly opposed foreign entanglements. Butas debate over diplomatic policy heated up, terrifying events overseas pulled thenation steadily toward war.

The Shadows of WarWar spread first across Asia. With imperialist ambitions of its own, yet reliant on othernations for natural resources such as oil, Japan turned its sights on China and seizedthe province of Manchuria in 1931. When reprimanded by the League of Nations,Japan simply withdrew from the organization. Continuing its expansionist drive,Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China in 1937. While taking over the capitalcity of Nanking, Japan’s army murdered as many as 300,000 Chinese men, women,and children and destroyed much of the city. Within a year, Japan controlled all butChina’s western interior and threatened all of Asia and the Pacific.

Meanwhile, the rise of authoritarian nationalism in Italy and Germany cast a darkshadow over Europe. The economic hardships brought on by the Great Depression—and, in Germany, resentment over the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles, whichended World War I—fueled the rise of demagogic mass movements. Glorifying waras a test of national virility, the Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini seized powerin 1922 and declared, “We have buried the putrid corpse of liberty.” In Germany,the National Socialists (Nazis), led by Adolf Hitler, combined militaristic rhetoricwith a racist doctrine of Aryan (Nordic) supremacy that claimed biological superi-ority for the blond-haired and blue-eyed peoples of northern Europe and classifiednonwhites, including Jews, as “degenerate races.”

Hitler, who became chancellor of Germany in January 1933 with the backingof major industrialists and about a third of the electorate, prepared for war. With hisbrown-shirted storm troopers ruling the streets, he quickly destroyed opposition par-ties and effectively made himself dictator of the strongest nation in central Europe.Renouncing the disarmament provisions of the Versailles treaty, he began to rebuildGermany’s armed forces.

The prospect of war grew as both Mussolini and Hitler began to act on theirimperial visions. In 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia and formally claimed the impover-ished African kingdom as a colony. In 1936, Hitler sent 35,000 troops to occupy theRhineland, a region demilitarized by the Versailles treaty. When the Spanish CivilWar broke out later that year, Italy and Germany both supported the fascist insurrec-tion of General Francisco Franco and then, in November, drew up a formal allianceto become the Rome–Berlin Axis. Hitler was now nearly ready to put into operationhis plan to secure Lebensraum—living space for Germany’s growing population—through further territorial expansion.

After annexing his native Austria, Hitler turned his attention to Czechoslovakia,a country both Britain and France were pledged by treaty to assist. War seemedimminent. But Britain and France surprised Hitler by agreeing, at a conference inMunich the last week of September 1938, to allow Germany to annex the Sudetenland,

890 CHAPTER 25 WORLD WAR II, 1941–1945

Guideline 21.1

WHAT STEPS did Roosevelt take in the

late 1930s to prepare the United States for war?

Lecture Suggestion 25.1, Events That Ledto World War

Albert Einstein, Letter to PresidentRoosevelt (1939)

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FIGURE 25-1Gallup Polls: European War and World War I, 1938–1940 These three polls conducted bythe American Institute of Public Opinion indicate the persistence of isolationist sentimentand popular criticism of U.S. involvement in World War I. Many respondents believed the United States, despite its commitments to European allies, should stay out of war.After 1940, in the aftermath of Nazi military victories in Europe, many Americans reconsidered their opposition, fearing a threat to democracy in their own nation.


a part of Czechoslovakia bordering Germany. In return, Hitler pledgedto stop his territorial advance. Less than six months later, in March 1939,Hitler seized the rest of Czechoslovakia.

By this time, much of the world was aware of the horror of Hitler’sregime, especially its virulent racist doctrines. After 1935, when Hitlerpublished the notorious Nuremberg Laws denying civil rights to Jews,the campaign against them became steadily more vicious. On the nightof November 9, 1938, Nazi storm troopers rounded up Jews, beatingthem mercilessly and murdering an untold number. They smashedwindows in Jewish shops, hospitals, and orphanages and burned syn-agogues to the ground. This attack came to be known as Kristallnacht,“the Night of Broken Glass.” The Nazi government soon expropriatedJewish property and excluded Jews from all but the most menial formsof employment. Pressured by Hitler, Hungary and Italy also enactedlaws against Jews.

IsolationismWorld War I had left a legacy of strong isolationist sentiment in theUnited States. Senseless slaughter might be a centuries-old way of life inEurope, many Americans reasoned, but not for the United States, which,as Thomas Jefferson had advised, should stay clear of “entanglingalliances.” College students, seeing themselves as future cannon fodder,began to demonstrate against war. As late as 1937, nearly 70 percent ofAmericans responding to a Gallup poll stated that U.S. involvement inWorld War I had been a mistake (see Figure 25-1).

This sentiment won strong support in Congress. In 1934, a specialcommittee headed by Republican senator Gerald P. Nye of North Dakotacharged weapons manufacturers with driving the United States intoWorld War I in the hopes of windfall profits, which, in fact, many real-ized. In 1935, Congress passed the first of five Neutrality Acts to deterfuture entanglements, requiring the president to declare an embargo onthe sale and shipment of munitions to all belligerent nations.

Isolationism spanned the political spectrum. In 1938, SocialistNorman Thomas gathered leading liberals and trade unionists into theKeep America Out of War Congress; the Communist-influenced AmericanLeague against War and Fascism claimed more than 1 million members.In 1940, the arch-conservative Committee to Defend America First wasformed to oppose U.S. intervention. Some America Firsters champi-oned the Nazis while others simply advocated American neutrality.Chaired by top Sears executive Robert E. Wood, the America FirstCommittee quickly gained attention because its members included well-known personalities such as movie stars Robert Young and Lillian Gish,automobile manufacturer Henry Ford, and Charles A. Lindbergh,

OCTOBER 2, 1938EUROPEAN WAR

If England and France go to war againstGermany do you think the United States

can stay out? Yes 57% No 43

By Region Yes No New England 46% 54% Middle Atlantic 61 39 East Central 60 40 West Central 57 43 South 60 40 West 51 49

FEBRUARY 21, 1940EUROPEAN WAR

Yes 23% No 77

If it appears that Germany is defeating England and France, should the United States declare war on Germany

and send our army and navy to Europe to fight?

7 percent expressed no opinion.

Interviewing Date 2/2–7/1940, Survey #183-K, Question #6

DECEMBER 16, 1940EUROPEAN WAR

Yes 39% No 42 No opinion 19

Do you think it was a mistake for the United States to enter the last World War?

By Political AffiliationDemocrats


Republicans


Interviewing Date 11/21–30/1940, Survey #244-K, Question #6

Interviewing Date 9/15–20/1938, Survey #132, Question #4

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famous for his 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic. Within a year, America First hadlaunched more than 450 chapters and claimed more than 850,000 members.

Roosevelt Readies for WarWhile Americans looked on anxiously, the twists and turns of world events promptedPresident Franklin D. Roosevelt to ready the nation for war. In October 1937, hecalled for international cooperation to “quarantine the aggressors.” But a poll ofCongress revealed that a two-thirds majority opposed economic sanctions, callingany such plan a “back door to war.” Forced to draw back, Roosevelt nevertheless wonfrom Congress $1 billion in appropriations to enlarge the navy.

Everything changed on September 1, 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland.Committed by treaty to defend Poland against unprovoked attack, Great Britain andFrance issued a joint declaration of war against Germany two days later. After thefall of Warsaw at the end of the month, the fighting slowed to a near halt. Even alongtheir border, French and German troops did not exchange fire. From the east, how-ever, the invasion continued. Just two weeks before Hitler overran Poland, the SovietUnion had stunned the world by signing a nonaggression pact with its former enemy.The Red Army now entered Poland, and the two great powers proceeded to split thehapless nation between them. Soviet forces then headed north, invading Finland onNovember 30. The European war had begun.

Calculating that the United States would stay out of the war, Hitler began acrushing offensive against western Europe in April 1940. Using the technique ofblitzkrieg (lightning war)—massed, fast-moving columns of tanks supported by airpower—that had overwhelmed Poland, Nazi troops moved first against Germany’snorthern neighbors. After taking Denmark and Norway, the Nazi armored divisionsswept over Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg and sent more than 338,000 Britishtroops into retreat across the English Channel from Dunkirk. Hitler’s army, joinedby the Italians, easily conquered France in June 1940. Hitler now turned towardEngland. In the Battle of Britain, Nazi bombers pounded population and industrialcenters while U-boats cut off incoming supplies.

Even with Great Britain under attack, opinion polls indicated Americans’ deter-mination to stay out of the war. But most Americans, like Roosevelt himself, believedthat the security of the United States depended on both a strong defense and thedefeat of Germany. Invoking the Neutrality Act of 1939, which permitted the sale ofarms to Britain, France, and China, the president clarified his position: “all aid to theAllies short of war.” In May 1940, he began to transfer surplus U.S. planes and equip-ment to the Allies. In September the president secured the first peacetime militarydraft in American history, the Selective Service Act of 1940, which sent 1.4 millionmen to army training camps by July 1941.

President Roosevelt could not yet admit the inevitability of U.S. involvement—especially during an election year. His popularity had dropped with the “Rooseveltrecession” that began in 1937, raising doubts that he could win what would be anunprecedented third term. In his campaign he promised voters not to “send your boysto any foreign wars.” Roosevelt and his vice presidential candidate Henry Wallacewon by a margin of 5 million popular votes over the Republican dark-horse candi-date, Wendell L. Willkie of Indiana.

Roosevelt now moved more aggressively to aid the Allies in their struggle withthe Axis powers. In his annual message to Congress, he proposed a bill that would allowthe president to sell, exchange, or lease arms to any country whose defense appearedvital to U.S. security. Passed by Congress in March 1941, the Lend-Lease Act made GreatBritain the first beneficiary of massive aid. After Congress authorized the merchant

Blitzkrieg German war tactic in WorldWar II (“lightning war”) involving the con-centration of air and armored firepower to punch and exploit holes in opposingdefensive lines.

Neutrality Act of 1939 Permitted the saleof arms to Britain, France, and China.

Axis powers The opponents of the UnitedStates and its allies in World War II.

Lend-Lease Act An arrangement for thetransfer of war supplies, including food,machinery, and services to nations whosedefense was considered vital to the defenseof the United States in World War II.

Q U I C K R E V I E W

Undeclared War

March 1941: Lend-lease programapproved by Congress.

FDR ordered navy to offer support to Britain.

August 1941: Atlantic Charter lays outBritish and American war aims.

Guideline 21.2

Class Discussion Question 25.1

Franklin D. Roosevelt, The FourFreedoms (1941)

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marine to sail fully armed while conveying lend-lease supplies directly to Britain, aformal declaration of war was only a matter of time.

In August 1941, Roosevelt met secretly at sea off Newfoundland with British PrimeMinister Winston Churchill to map military strategy and declare common goals for thepostwar world. Known as the Atlantic Charter, their proclamation specified the right ofall peoples to live in freedom from fear, want, and tyranny. The Atlantic Charter also calledfor free trade among all nations, disarmament, and an end to territorial seizures.

By this time the European war had moved to a new stage. Having conqueredthe Balkans, Hitler set aside the expedient Nazi-Soviet Pact to resume his quest forthe entire European continent. In June 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, promis-ing its rich agricultural land to German farmers. Observing this dramatic escalation,the United States moved closer to intervention.

Pearl HarborThroughout 1940 and much of 1941, the United States focused on events in Europe,but the war in Asia went on. Roosevelt, anticipating danger to American interests in the

Japanese attack planes devastated the U.S. fleetstationed on the Hawai’ian island of Oahu.Before December 7, 1941, few Americans hadheard of Pearl Harbor, but the “sneak” attackbecame a symbol of Japanese treachery and the necessity for U.S. revenge.

National Archives and Records Administration.

Guideline 21.3

Atlantic Charter Statement of commonprinciples and war aims developed by President Franklin Roosevelt andBritish Prime Minister Winston Churchillat a meeting in August 1941.

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Pacific, had directed the transfer of the Pacific Fleetfrom bases in California to Pearl Harbor, on theisland of Oahu, Hawai’i, in May 1940. Less thanfive months later, on September 27, Japan formallyjoined Germany and Italy as the Asian partner ofthe Axis alliance.

The United States and Japan each playedfor time. Roosevelt wanted to save his resources tofight against Germany and, moreover, wanted toavoid the possibility of fighting a two-front war;Japan’s leaders gambled that America’s preoccu-pation with Europe might allow them to conquerall of Southeast Asia, including the Frenchcolonies in Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, andLaos) and the British possessions of Burma andIndia. When Japan occupied Indochina in July1941, however, Roosevelt responded by freezingJapanese assets in the United States and cuttingoff its oil supplies.

Confrontation with Japan now looked likely.U.S. intelligence had broken the Japanese secretdiplomatic code, and the president knew that

Japan was preparing to attack somewhere in the Pacific. By the end of November, hehad placed all American forces on high alert.

Early Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, Japanese carriers launched an attackon the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor that caught American forces completely by surprise.Within two hours, Japanese pilots had destroyed nearly 200 American planes and badlydamaged the fleet; more than 2,400 Americans were killed and nearly 1,200 wounded.On the same day, Japan struck U.S. bases on the Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island.

The next day, President Roosevelt addressed Congress: “Yesterday,” heannounced, “December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United Statesof America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval and air forces of theEmpire of Japan.” With only one dissenting vote—by pacifist Jeannette Rankin ofMontana, who had voted against U.S. entry into World War I in 1917—Congressapproved the president’s request for a declaration of war. Three days later, Japan’sEuropean Allies, Germany and Italy, declared war on the United States.

Arsenal of Democracy

B y the time the United States entered World War II, the U.S. economy hadalready been regeared for military purposes. Late in 1940, President Roosevelthad called on all Americans to make the nation a “great arsenal of democ-

racy.” Once the United States entered World War II, the federal government beganto pour an unprecedented amount of energy and money into wartime productionand assigned a huge army of experts to manage it. This vast marshaling of resourceswas neither simple nor speedy, but it ultimately brought a concentration of power inthe federal government that exceeded anything planned by the New Deal. It alsobrought an end to the Great Depression.

Mobilizing for WarA few days after the United States declared war on Germany, Congress passed the WarPowers Act, which established a precedent for executive authority that would endure

On the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor,President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed ajoint session of Congress and asked for animmediate declaration of war against Japan.The resolution passed with one dissenting vote,and the United States entered World War II.

AP Wide World Photos.

WHAT ROLE did the federal

government play in gearing up the economy

for wartime production?

War Powers Act Act that gave the U.S.president the power to reorganize the fed-eral government and create new agencies;to establish programs censoring news,information, and abridging civil liberties;to seize foreign-owned property; and awardgovernment contracts without bidding.

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long after the war’s end. The president gained the power to reorganize the federalgovernment and create new agencies; to establish programs censoring all news andinformation and abridging civil liberties; to seize property owned by foreigners; andeven to award government contracts without competitive bidding.

Roosevelt promptly created special wartime agencies. At the top of his agendawas a massive reorientation and management of the economy, and an alphabet soupof new agencies arose to fill any gaps. The Supply Priorities and Allocation Board(SPAB) oversaw the use of scarce materials and resources vital to the war, adjustingdomestic consumption (even ending it for some products such as automobiles) to mil-itary needs. The Office of Price Administration (OPA) checked the threat of infla-tion by imposing price controls. The National War Labor Board (NWLB) mediateddisputes between labor and management. The War Manpower Commission (WMC)directed the mobilization of military and civilian services. And the Office of WarMobilization (OWM) coordinated operations among all these agencies.

Several new agencies focused on domestic propaganda. The attack on PearlHarbor evoked an outpouring of rage against Japan and effectively quashed muchopposition to U.S. intervention. Nevertheless the government stepped in to fan thefires of patriotism and to shape public opinion. In June 1942, the president createdthe Office of War Information (OWI) to engage the press, radio, and film industryin an informational campaign—in short, to sell the war to the American people.

The OWI gathered data and controlled the release of news, emphasizing theneed to make reports on the war both dramatic and encouraging. Like the Committeeon Public Information during World War I, during the first twenty-one months of thewar the new agency banned the publication of advertisements, photographs, andnewsreels showing American dead, fearing that such images would demoralize thepublic. In 1943, worrying that Americans had become overconfident, officials changedtheir policy. A May issue of Newsweek featured graphic photographs of Americanswounded in battle, explaining that “to harden home-front morale, the military ser-vices have adopted a new policy of letting civilians see photographically what warfaredoes to men who fight.” The OWI also published leaflets and booklets for the armedservices and flooded enemy ranks with subversive propaganda.

Propaganda also fueled the selling of war bonds. Secretary of the TreasuryHenry Morgenthau, Jr. not only encouraged Americans to buy government bonds tofinance the war but planned a campaign “to use bonds to sell the war, rather than viceversa.” Buying bonds would “mean bullets in the bellies of Hitler’s hordes!” Discoveringthrough research that Americans felt more antagonism to Japan than Germany,Morgenthau directed his staff to use more negative stereotypes of the Japanese in theiradvertising copy. Polls showed, however, that most Depression-stung Americansbought war bonds—$185.7 billion by war’s end—mainly to invest safely, to counterinflation, and to save for postwar purchases.

The federal government also sponsored various measures to prevent subver-sion of the war effort. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was kept busy, itsappropriation rising from $6 million to $16 million in just two years. The attorneygeneral authorized wiretapping in cases of espionage or sabotage, but the FBI usedit extensively—and illegally—in domestic surveillance. The Joint Chiefs of Staff cre-ated the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to assess the enemy’s military strength,to gather intelligence information, and to oversee espionage activities. Its head,Colonel William Donovan, envisioned the OSS as an “adjunct to military strategy” andengaged leading social scientists to plot psychological warfare against the enemy.

One important outcome of these activities was to increase the size of the gov-ernment many times over its New Deal level. It cost about $250 million a day to fightthe war, and the federal government spent twice as much during the war as it had

Guidelines 22.1and 22.6

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during its entire prior history. The number of federal employees nearly quadru-pled, from slightly more than 1 million in 1940 to nearly 4 million by the war’s end.

The exception to this pattern of expansion was the New Deal itself. AsPresident Roosevelt announced in 1942, “Dr. New Deal” had been replaced by“Dr. Win the War.” No longer carrying the heavy responsibility of bringing thenation out of the Great Depression, his administration directed all its resourcestoward securing the planes, ships, guns, and food required for victory. Moreover,the 1942 elections weakened the New Deal coalition by unseating many liberalDemocrats. The Republicans gained forty-six new members in the House ofRepresentatives, nine in the Senate. Republicans now had greater opportunity toquash proposals to extend the social programs instituted during the 1930s. Oneby one, New Deal agencies vanished.

Organizing the EconomyThe decisive factor for victory, even more than military prowess and superior strat-egy, would be, many observers agreed, the ability of the United States to outproduceits enemies. The country enjoyed many advantages to meet this challenge: a largeindustrial base, abundant natural resources (largely free from interference by the war),and a civilian population large enough to permit it to increase both its labor forceand its armed forces. Defense spending would lift the United States out of the GreatDepression and create the biggest economic boom in the history of any nation. Butfirst the entire civilian economy had to be both expanded and transformed for theproduction of arms and other military supplies.

By the summer of 1941, the federal government was pouring vast amounts intodefense production. Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, allocations topped$100 billion for equipment and supplies, which exceeded what American firms hadproduced in any previous wars. Facing war orders too large to fill, American indus-tries were now primed for all-out production. Factories operated around-the-clock,seven days a week. In January 1943, Roosevelt formed the War Production Board to“exercise general responsibility” for all this activity.

With better equipment and more motivation, American workers proved twiceas productive as the Germans, five times as productive as the Japanese. No wonderthe actual volume of industrial output expanded at the fastest rate in Americanhistory. Military production alone grew from 2 percent of the 1939 total grossnational product to 40 percent of the 1943 total. “Something is happening,”announced Time magazine, “that Adolf Hitler does not understand . . . it is themiracle of production.”

Businesses scored huge profits from military contracts. The government pro-vided low-interest loans and even direct subsidies for the expansion of facilities, withgenerous tax write-offs for retooling. The 100 largest corporations, which manufac-tured 30 percent of all goods in 1940, garnered 70 percent of all war and civiliancontracts and the bulk of the war profits. On the other hand, many small businessesclosed, a half-million between 1941 and 1943 alone.

Defense production transformed entire regions. The impact was strongest inthe West—the major staging area for the war in the Pacific—where the federal gov-ernment spent nearly $40 billion for military and industrial expansion. Californiasecured 10 percent of all federal funds, and by 1944, Los Angeles had become thenation’s second largest manufacturing center, only slightly behind Detroit. TheSouth also benefited from 60 of the army’s 100 new camps. Its textile factorieshummed: the army alone required nearly 520 million pairs of socks and 230 millionpairs of pants. The economic boom lifted entire populations out of sharecropping


Government and the Economy

War brought a huge expansion of the federal government.

Under government pressure, industryshifted to defense production.

Federal budget grew to ten times the previous level.

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and tenancy into well-paid industrial jobs in the cities and pumpedunprecedented profits into southern business. Across the country therural population decreased by almost 20 percent.

Despite a “Food for Freedom” program, American farmers couldnot keep up with the rising international demand or even the domes-tic market for milk, potatoes, fruits, and sugar. The Department ofAgriculture reached its goals only in areas such as livestock production,thanks to skyrocketing wholesale prices for meat. The war also speededthe development of large-scale, mechanized production of crops, includ-ing the first widespread use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. By1945, farm income had doubled, but thousands of small farms had dis-appeared, never to return.

New WorkersThe wartime economy brought an unprecedented number of newworkers into the labor force. The bracero (from brazo, Spanish for“arms”) program, negotiated by United States and Mexico in 1942,brought more than 200,000 Mexicans into the United States for short-term employment mainly as farm workers. Wartime production alsoopened trades that had been previously closed to Mexican Americans,such as shipbuilding. Sioux and Navajos were hired in large numbers to build ord-nance depots and military training centers. African Americans secured in just fouryears a greater variety of jobs than in the seven decades since the outbreak of theCivil War. The number of black workers rose from 2,900,000 to 3,800,000.

The war most dramatically altered the wage-earning patterns of women. Thefemale labor force grew by more than 50 percent, reaching 19.5 million in 1945.The rate of growth proved especially high for white women over the age of thirty-five,and for the first time married women became the majority of female wage earners.The employment rate changed comparatively little for African American women;fully 90 percent had been in the labor force in 1940. However, many black womenleft domestic service for higher-paying jobs in industry.

Neither government nor industry rushed to recruit women. Well into the sum-mer of 1942, the Department of War advised businesses to hold back from hiringwomen “until all available male labor in the area had first been employed.” Likewise,neither government nor industry expected women to stay in their jobs when the warended. “Rosie the Riveter” appeared in posters and advertisements as the modelfemale citizen, but only “for the duration.” In Washington, D.C., women bus driverswere given badges to wear on their uniforms that read: “I am taking the place of aman who went to war.”

For the most part, advertisers used conventional gender stereotypes to makewartime jobs appealing to women. Recruitment posters and informational filmsdepicted women’s new industrial jobs as simple variations of domestic tasks. Whereonce housewives sewed curtains for their kitchens, they now produced silk para-chutes. Their skill with a vacuum cleaner easily translated into riveting on huge ships.“Instead of cutting a cake,” one newsreel explained, “this woman [factory worker] cutsthe pattern of aircraft parts. Instead of baking a cake, this woman is cooking gearsto reduce the tension in the gears after use.”

Compared to the Great Depression, when married women were barred frommany jobs, World War II opened up new fields. The number of women automo-bile workers, for example, jumped from 29,000 to 200,000, that of women electri-cal workers from 100,000 to 374,000. Polled near the end of the war, the

Facing a shortage of workers and increased pro-duction demands, the War ManpowerCommission and the Office of War Informationconducted a campaign to recruit women into the labor force. Women were encouraged to “take a job for your husband/son/brother”and to “keep the world safe for your children.”Higher wages also enticed many women to takejobs in factories producing aircraft, ships, andordnance. This photograph, taken in 1942,shows a woman working in a munitions factory.

The Granger Collection, New York.


Rosie the Riveter

Demand for labor drew women into the work place.

Companies opened positions for womenin nontraditional jobs.

Most women were forced to leaveindustrial jobs after the war.


Audio-Visual Aid, “The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter”

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overwhelming majority—75 percent—of women workers expressed a desire tokeep working, preferably at the same jobs.

Although 17 million new jobs were created during the war, the economicgains were not evenly distributed. Wages increased by as much as 50 percent butnever as fast as profits or prices. This widely reported disparity produced one of themost turbulent periods in American labor history (see Table 25.1). More workerswent on strike in 1941, before the United States entered the war, than in any pre-vious year except 1919. A militant union drive at Ford Motor Company’s enormousRiver Rouge plant made the United Auto Workers (UAW) one of the most power-ful labor organizations in the world. Total union membership increased from10.5 million to 14.7 million, with the women’s share alone rising from 11 to 23 percent.Unions also enrolled 1,250,000 African Americans, twice the prewar number.

Once the United States entered the war, the major unions dutifully agreed tono-strike pledges for its duration. Nevertheless, rank-and-file union members sporad-ically staged illegal “wildcat” strikes during the war. The most dramatic, a walkout ofmore than a half-million coal miners in 1943, led by the rambunctious John L. Lewis,withstood the attacks of the government and the press. Roosevelt repeatedly orderedthe mines seized, only to find, as Lewis retorted, that coal could not be mined withbayonets. The Democratic majority in Congress passed the first federal antistrikebill, giving the president power to penalize strikers, even to draft them. And yet thestrikes grew in size and number, reaching a level greater than in any other four-yearperiod in American history.

The Home Front

M ost Americans thoroughly appreciated the burst of prosperity brought onby wartime production, but they also experienced food rationing, longworkdays, and separation from loved ones. Alongside national unity ran

deep conflicts on the home front. Racial and ethnic hostilities flared repeatedly andon several occasions erupted in violence.

Families in WartimeDespite the uncertainties of wartime, or perhaps because of them, men and womenrushed into marriage. The surge in personal income caused by the wartime economic

Number of Number of Workers Number of Man- Percent of TotalYear Strikes Involved Days Idle Employed

1940 2,508 576,988 6,700,872 2.31941 4,288 2,362,620 23,047,556 8.41942 2,968 839,961 4,182,557 2.81943 3,752 1,981,279 13,500,529 6.91944 4,956 2,115,637 8,721,079 7.01945 4,750 3,467,000 38,025,000 12.2

Despite “no-strike” pledges, workers staged wildcat strikes in the war years. Union leaders negotiated shorterhours, higher wages, and seniority rules and helped to build union membership to a new height. When the warended, nearly 30 percent of all nonagricultural workers were union members.

“Work Stoppages Caused by Labor-Management Disputes in 1945,” Monthly Labor Review, May 1946, p. 720; and Martin Glaberman, War TimeStrikes (Detroit: Bewick, 1980), p. 36.

TABLE 25.1 STRIKES AND LOCKOUTS IN THE UNITED STATES, 1940–45

In this excerpt, Margarita SalazarMcSweyn, an employee in the defenseplants, recalls why she took a jobdrilling the wings of airplanes.

. . . the money was in defense. Everybodywould talk about the overtime and howmuch more money it was. And it wasexciting. Being involved in that era youfigured you were doing something for your country—and at the sametime making money. . . . It wasn’t for the glamour. You weren’t going to meet all these guys; you would beworking primarily with women. . . .

WHAT MAJOR changes occurred in

American society as a consequence of

wartime mobilization?

Guideline 22.3

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boom meant that many young couples could afford to set up their own households—something their counterparts in the 1930s had not been able to do. As one social sci-entist remarked at the time, “Economic conditions were ripe for a rush to the altar.”For other couples, the prospect of separation provided the incentive. The U.S. CensusBureau estimated that between 1940 and 1943, at least a million more people mar-ried than would have been expected had there been no war. The marriage rate sky-rocketed, peaking in 1946, but by 1946 the number of divorces also set records.

Housing shortages were acute, and rents were high. So scarce were apartmentsthat taxi drivers became, for an extra fee, up-to-the-minute guides to vacancies. Ableto set their own terms, landlords frequently discriminated against families with chil-dren and even more so against racial minorities.

Supplying a household was scarcely less difficult. Although retailers extendedtheir store hours into the evenings and weekends, shopping had to be squeezed inbetween long hours on the job. Extra planning was necessary for purchasing government-rationed staples such as meat, cheese, sugar, milk, coffee, gasoline, andeven shoes. To free up commercially grown produce for the troops overseas, manyfamilies grew their own fruits and vegetables. In 1943, the peak year of VictoryGardens, three-fifths of the population were “growing their own,” which amountedto a staggering 8 million tons of food that year.

Although the Office of Price Administration tried to prevent inflation andensure an equitable distribution of foodstuffs, many women found it nearly impos-sible to manage both a demanding job and a household. This dual responsibilitycontributed to high turnover and absentee rates in factories.

The care of small children became a major problem. Wartime employmentor military service often separated husbands and wives, leaving children in thehands of only one parent. But even when families stayed together, both adults oftenworked long hours, sometimes on different shifts. Although the War Manpower

Students at Officers’ Training Schoolat Northwestern University, who were notallowed to marry until they were commissionedas ensigns, apply for marriage licenses in Chicago, August 20, 1943, shortly beforegraduation. These young couples helped the marriage rate skyrocket during World War II.

© Bettmann/CORBIS.

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Commission estimated that as many as 2 million children needed some form ofchild care, federally funded day-care centers served less than 10 percent of defenseworkers’ children. In most communities, the limited facilities sponsored by indus-try or municipal governments could not keep up with the growing number of“latchkey” children.

Juvenile delinquency rose during the war. With employers often relaxing min-imum age requirements for employment, many teenagers quit school for the highwages of factory jobs. Runaways drifted from city to city, finding temporary work atwartime plants or at military installations. Gangs formed in major urban areas, lead-ing to brawling, prostitution, or automobile thefts for joy rides. Overall, however,with so many young men either employed or serving in the armed forces, crime byjuvenile as well as adult males declined. In contrast, complaints against girls, mainlyfor sexual offenses or for running away from home, increased significantly. Inresponse, local officials created various youth agencies and charged them with devel-oping more recreational and welfare programs. Meanwhile, local school boardsappealed to employers to hire only older workers, and toward the end of the war thestudent dropout rate began to decline.

Public health improved greatly during the war. Forced to cut back on expen-ditures for medical care during the Great Depression, many Americans now spentlarge portions of their wartime paychecks on doctors, dentists, and prescriptiondrugs. But even more important were the medical benefits provided to the morethan 16 million men inducted into the armed forces and their dependents.Nationally, incidences of such communicable diseases as typhoid fever, tuberculo-sis, and diphtheria dropped considerably, the infant death rate fell by more thana third, and life expectancy increased by three years. The death rate in 1942, exclud-ing battle deaths, was the lowest in the nation’s history. In the South and Southwest,however, racism and widespread poverty combined to halt or even reverse thesetrends. These regions continued to have the highest infant and maternal mortal-ity rates in the nation.

The Internment of Japanese AmericansAfter the attack on Pearl Harbor, many Americans feared an invasion of the main-land and suspected Japanese Americans of secret loyalty to an enemy government.On December 8, 1941, the federal government froze the financial assets of thoseborn in Japan, known as Issei, who had been barred from U.S. citizenship.Meanwhile, in the name of national defense, a coalition of politicians, patrioticorganizations, business groups, and military officials called for the removal of allAmericans of Japanese descent from Pacific coastal areas. Although a StateDepartment intelligence report certified their loyalty, Japanese Americans—two-thirds of whom were American-born citizens—became the only ethnic groupsingled out for legal sanctions.

Charges of sedition masked long-standing racial prejudices. The press began touse the word “Jap” in headlines, while political cartoonists employed blatant racialstereotypes. Popular songs appeared with titles like “You’re a Sap, Mister Jap, to Makea Yankee Cranky.” “The very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date,” an armyreport suggested, with twisted logic, “is a disturbing and confirming indication thataction will be taken.”

On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066,which in effect authorized the exclusion of more than 112,000 Japanese Americanmen, women, and children from designated military areas, mainly in California,

Issei The first generation of Japanese tocome to America, starting in the late 1800s.


Internment

December 8, 1941: Financial assets of Issei frozen.

February 19, 1942: Civil rights of JapaneseAmericans suspended and 112,000 peoplerelocated to internment camps.

1944: Supreme Court upheldconstitutionality of relocation.

In this excerpt, from ExecutiveOrder 9066, President Franklin D.Roosevelt formally authorizes the internment of Japanese Americansfrom designated military areas.

. . . by virtue of the authority vested in meas President of the United States . . . pre-scribe military areas in such places andof such extent as he or the appropriateMilitary Commander may determine,from which any or all persons may beexcluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remainin, or leave shall be subject to whateverrestrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commandermay impose in his discretion.


Audio-Visual Aid, “A Question of Loyalty”

Guidelines 22.4and 22.5

Executive Order 9066 (1942)

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but also in Oregon, Washington, and southern Arizona. The armyprepared for forced evacuation, rounding up and removingJapanese Americans from the communities where they had livedand worked, sometimes for generations.

During the spring of 1942, Japanese American familiesreceived one week’s notice to close up their businesses and homes.Told to bring only what they could carry, they were then trans-ported to one of the ten internment camps managed by the WarRelocation Authority. The guarded camps were located as far awayas Arkansas, although the majority had been set up in the remotedesert areas of Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Arizona, Wyoming, andCalifornia. Karl G. Yoneda described his quarters at Manzanar innorthern California:

There were no lights, stoves, or window panes. My twocousins and I, together with seven others, werecrowded into a 25 � 30 foot room. We slept on armycots with our clothes on. The next morning wediscovered that there were no toilets or washrooms. . . .We saw GIs manning machine guns in the watchtowers.The barbed wire fence which surrounded the campwas visible against the background of the snow-coveredSierra mountain range. “So this is the American-styleconcentration camp,” someone remarked.

By August, virtually every west coast resident who had at least one Japanesegrandparent had been interned.

The Japanese American Citizens League charged that “racial animosity” ratherthan military necessity had dictated the internment policy. Despite the protest of theAmerican Civil Liberties Union and several church groups against the abridgmentof the civil rights of Japanese Americans, the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. UnitedStates (1944) upheld the constitutionality of relocation on grounds of nationalsecurity. By this time a program of gradual release was in place, although the lastcenter, at Tule Lake, California, did not close until March 1946. In protest, nearly6,000 Japanese Americans renounced their U.S. citizenship. Japanese Americans hadlost homes and businesses valued at $500 million in what many historians judge asbeing the worst violation of American civil liberties during the war. Not until 1988did the U.S. Congress vote reparations of $20,000 and a public apology to each of the60,000 surviving victims.

“Double V”: Victory at Home and AbroadThroughout the war, African American activists conducted a “Double V” campaign,mobilizing not only for Allied victory but for their own rights as citizens. “The armyis about to take me to fight for democracy,” one Detroit resident said, “but I wouldas leave fight for democracy right here.” Black militants demanded, at a minimum,fair housing and equal employment opportunities.

Even before the United States entered the war, A. Philip Randolph, presidentof both the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and the National Negro Congress,had begun to mobilize against discrimination. At a planning meeting in Chicago, ablack woman proposed sending African Americans to Washington, D.C., “from all

More than 110,000 Japanese Americans wereinterned during World War II, some for up to four years. This photograph, taken by Dorothea Lange (1895–1965), the famedphotographer of Depression Era migrant families,shows the Mochida family in May 1942 waitingfor a bus that will take them to a relocation camp.

Photri-Microstock, Inc.

In this excerpt, Jeanne Wakatsukireminiscences of her arrival and the conditions in Manzanar, aninternment camp located in the desert of southern California,where she and ten thousand otherJapanese Americans spent the duration of the war.

We drove past a barbed-wire fence, througha gate, and into an open space . . . Afterdinner we were taken to Block I6, a clusterof fifteen barracks that had just been fin-ished a day or so earlier—although finishedwas hardly the word for it. The shacks werebuilt of one thickness of pine planking cov-ered with tarpaper. They sat on concretefootings, with about two feet of open spacebetween the floorboards and the ground. . . .

Lecture Suggestion 25.3, The Groundwork for Domestic PolicyProblems in the Postwar Era

A. Philip Randolph, Why Should WeMarch? (1942)

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over the country, in jalopies, in trains, and any way they can get thereuntil we get some action from the White House.” African Americansacross the country began to prepare for a “great rally” of no less than100,000 people to be held at the Lincoln Memorial on the Fourth of July.

Eager to stop the March on Washington movement, PresidentRoosevelt met with Randolph, who proposed an executive order “mak-ing it mandatory that Negroes be permitted to work in [defense]plants.” Randolph reviewed several drafts before approving the textthat became, on June 25, 1941, Executive Order 8802, banning dis-crimination in defense industries and government. The president laterappointed a Fair Employment Practices Committee to hear complaintsand to redress grievances. Randolph called off the march but remaineddetermined to “shake up white America.”

Other civil rights organizations formed during wartime to fightboth discrimination and Jim Crow practices, including segregation inthe U.S. armed forces. The interracial Congress of Racial Equality(CORE), formed by pacifists in 1942, staged sit-ins at Chicago, Detroit,and Denver restaurants that refused to serve African Americans. Inseveral cities, CORE used nonviolent means to challenge racial segre-gation in public facilities. Meanwhile, membership in the NationalAssociation for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), whichtook a strong stand against discrimination in defense plants and in themilitary, grew from 50,000 in 1940 to 450,000 in 1946.

The toughest struggles against discrimination took place, however,in local communities. Approximately 1.2 million African Americans had

left the rural South to take jobs in wartime industries, and they faced not only seri-ous housing shortages but whites intent on keeping them out of the best jobs andneighborhoods. For example, “hate strikes” broke out in defense plants across thecountry when African Americans were hired or upgraded to positions customarily heldby white workers. In 1942, 20,000 white workers at the Packard Motor Car Companyin Detroit walked out to protest the promotion of three black workers. One yearlater, at a nearby U.S. Rubber Company factory, more than half the white workerswalked out when African American women began to operate the machinery.

Detroit was also the site of bloody race riots. In February 1942, when twenty blackfamilies attempted to move into new federally funded apartments adjacent to a PolishAmerican community, a mob of 700 armed white protesters halted the moving vans andburned a cross on the project’s grounds. Two months later, 1,750 city police and statetroopers supervised the move of these families into the Sojourner Truth HousingProject, named after the famous abolitionist and former slave. The following summer,racial violence reached its wartime peak. Twenty-five blacks and nine whites were killedand more than 700 were injured. By the time the 6,000 federal troops restored order,property losses topped $2 million. One writer reported: “I thought that I had witnessedan experience peculiar to the Deep South. On the streets of Detroit I saw again thesame horrible exhibition of uninhibited hate as they fought and killed one another—white against black—in a frenzy of homicidal mania, without rhyme or reason.”

During the summer of 1943, more than 270 racial conflicts occurred in nearly fiftycities. The poet Langston Hughes, who supported U.S. involvement in the war, wrote:

Looky here, AmericaWhat you done done—Let things driftUntil the riots come

This painting is by Horace Pippin, a self-taughtAfrican American artist who began painting astherapy for an injury suffered while serving with the U.S. Army’s 369th Colored InfantryRegiment during World War I. It is one of a seriesdrawn during World War II illustrating the contra-diction between the principles of liberty and jus-tice, for which Americans were fighting abroad,and the reality of race prejudice at home.

Horace Pippin (1888–1946), Mr. Prejudice, 1943. Oil on canvas,

18 � 14 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Dr. and Mrs.

Matthew T. Moore. Photo by Graydon Wood (1984–108–1).

Guideline 22.2

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Yet you say we’re fightingFor democracy.Then why don’t democracyInclude me?

I ask you this questionCause I want to knowHow long I got to fightBOTH HITLER—AND JIM CROW.

Zoot-Suit RiotsOn the night of June 4, 1943, sailors poured into nearly 200 cars and taxis to drivethrough the streets of East Los Angeles in search of Mexican Americans dressed inzoot suits. The sailors assaulted their victims at random, even chasing one youth intoa movie theater and stripping him of his clothes while the audience cheered. Riotsbroke out and continued for five days.

Two communities had collided, with tragic results. The sailors had only recentlybeen uprooted from their hometowns and regrouped under the strict discipline ofboot camp. Now stationed in southern California while awaiting departure overseas,they came face-to-face with Mexican American teenagers wearing long-draped coats,pegged pants, pocket watches with oversized chains, and big floppy hats. To thesailors, the zoot suit was not just a flamboyant fashion. Unlike the uniform the youngsailors wore, the zoot suit signaled defiance and a lack of patriotism.

The zoot-suiters, however, represented less than 10 percent of their community’syouth. More than 300,000 Mexican Americans were serving in the armed forces (anumber representing a greater proportion of their draft-age population than otherAmericans), and they served in the most hazardous branches, the paratrooper andmarine corps. Many others were employed in war industries in Los Angeles, whichhad become home to the largest community of Mexican Americans in the nation. Forthe first time Mexican Americans were finding well-paying jobs, and, like AfricanAmericans, they expected their government to protect them from discrimination.

Military and civilian authorities eventually contained the zoot-suit riots by rul-ing several sections of Los Angeles off-limits to military personnel, and the city coun-cil passed legislation making the wearing of a zoot suit in public a criminal offense.Many Mexican Americans expressed concern about their personal safety; some fearedthat, after the government rounded up the Japanese, they would be the next groupsent to internment camps.

Popular Culture and “The Good War”Global events shaped the lives of American civilians but appeared to touch themonly indirectly in their everyday activities. Food shortages, long hours in the facto-ries, and even fears for loved ones abroad did not take away all the pleasures of fullemployment and prosperity. With money in their pockets, Americans spent freely atvacation resorts, country clubs, racetracks, nightclubs, dance halls, and movie theaters.Sales of books skyrocketed, and spectator sports attracted huge audiences.

Popular music seemed to bridge the growing racial divisions of the neighbor-hood and the work place. Transplanted southern musicians, black and white, broughttheir regional styles to northern cities. Played on jukeboxes in bars, bus stations, andcafes, “country” and “rhythm & blues” not only won over new audiences but alsoinspired musicians themselves to cross old boundaries. Musicians of the war years“made them steel guitars cry and whine,” Ray Charles recalled. They also paved theway musically for the emergence of rock and roll a decade later.

In this excerpt, A. Philip Randolphreiterates the African Americandetermination for equality andequal citizenship.

The March on Washington Movement isessentially a movement of the people. It isall Negro and pro-Negro, but not for thatreason anti-white or anti-Semitic, or anti-Catholic, or anti-foreign, or anti-labor. . . .“Whether Negroes should march onWashington, and if so, when?” will bethe focus of a forthcoming national conference. . . . No power on earth cancause them today to abandon their fightto wipe out every vestige of second classcitizenship and the dual standards thatplague them.

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Many popular songs featured war themes. Personal sentiment meshed with gov-ernment directive to depict a “good war,” justifying massive sacrifice. The war was tobe seen as a worthy and even noble cause. The plaintive “A Rainbow at Midnight” bycountry singer Ernest Tubb expressed the hope of a common “dogface” soldier look-ing beyond the misery and horror to the promise of a brighter tomorrow. “Till Then,”recorded by the Mills Brothers, a harmonious black quartet, offered the prospect ofa romantic reunion when “the world will be free.” The era’s best-known tune, IrvingBerlin’s “White Christmas,” evoked a lyrical nostalgia of past celebrations with fam-ily and friends close by. On the lighter side, novelty artist Spike Jones made his namewith the “razz” or “Bronx cheer,” in “We’re Going to Ffft in the Fuehrer’s Face.”

Meanwhile, Hollywood artists threw themselves into a perpetual round offundraising and morale-boosting public events. Movie stars called on fans to buywar bonds and to support the troops. Combat films such as Action in the NorthAtlantic made heroes of ordinary Americans under fire, depicting GIs of differentraces and ethnicities discovering their common humanity. Movies with antifascistthemes, such as Tender Comrade, promoted friendship among Russians andAmericans, while films like Since You Went Away portrayed the loyalty and resilienceof families with servicemen stationed overseas.

The wartime spirit also infected the juvenile world of comics. The climbingsales of nickel “books” spawned a proliferation of patriotic superheroes such as theGreen Lantern and Captain Marvel. Even Bugs Bunny put on a uniform and foughtsinister-looking enemies.

Fashion designers did their part. Padded shoulders and straight lines becamepopular for both men and women. Patriotic Americans, such as civil defense volun-teers and Red Cross workers, fancied uniforms, and women employed in defenseplants wore pants, often for the first time. Restrictions on materials also influencedfashion. Production of nylon stockings was halted because the material was neededfor parachutes; women’s skirts were shortened, while the War Production Boardencouraged cuffless “Victory Suits” for men. Executive Order M-217 restricted the col-ors of shoes manufactured during the war to “black, white, navy blue, and threeshades of brown.”

Never to see a single battle, safeguarded by two oceans, many Americans never-theless experienced the war years as the most intense of their entire lives. Popularmusic, Hollywood movies, radio programs, and advertisements—all screened by theOffice of War Information—encouraged a sense of personal involvement in a collec-tive effort to preserve democracy at home and to save the world from fascism. No onewas excluded, no action considered insignificant. Even casual conversation cameunder the purview of the government, which warned that “Loose Lips Sink Ships.”

Men and Women in Uniform

D uring World War I, American soldiers served for a relatively brief periodand in small numbers. A quarter-century later, World War II mobilized16.4 million Americans into the armed forces. Although only 34 percent

of men who served in the army saw combat—the majority during the final year of thewar—the experience had a powerful impact on nearly everyone. Whether workingin the steno pool at Great Lakes Naval Training Center in northern Illinois or slog-ging through mud with rifle in hand in the Philippines, many men and women sawtheir lives reshaped in unpredictable ways. For those who survived, the war oftenproved to be the defining experience of their lives.

HOW DID the war affect the lives

of American women?

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Creating the Armed ForcesBefore the European war broke out in 1939, the majority of the 200,000 men in theU.S. armed forces were employed as military police, engaged in tasks such as patrollingthe Mexican border or occupying colonial possessions such as the Philippines.Neither the Army nor the Navy was prepared for the scale of combat World War IIentailed. Only the U.S. Marine Corps, which had been planning since the 1920s towrest control of the western Pacific from Japan, was poised to fight.

On October 16, 1940, National Registration Day, all men between the ages oftwenty-one and thirty-six were legally obligated to register for military service. Afterthe United States entered the war, the draft age was lowered to eighteen, and localboards were instructed to choose first from the youngest.

One-third of the men examined by the Selective Service were rejected. Surprisingnumbers were refused induction because they were physically unfit for military service.For the first time, men were screened for “neuropsychiatric disorders or emotionalproblems,” and approximately 1.6 million were rejected on this reason. At a timewhen only one American in four graduated from high school, induction centersturned away many conscripts because they were functionally illiterate. But those whopassed the screening tests joined the best-educated army in history: nearly half ofwhite draftees had graduated from high school and 10 percent had attended college.

The officer corps, whose top-ranking members were from the Command andGeneral Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, tended to be highly professional, politi-cally conservative, and personally autocratic. General Douglas MacArthur, supremecommander in the Pacific theater, was said to admire the discipline of the Germanarmy and to disparage political democracy. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, however,supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe, projected a new and contrast-ing spirit. Distrusted by MacArthur and many of the older brass, Eisenhower appearedto his troops a model of leadership.

The democratic rhetoric of the war and the sudden massive expansion of thearmed forces contributed to this transformation of the officer corps. A shortage ofofficers during World War I had prompted a huge expansion of the Reserve OfficerTraining Corps, but it still could not meet the demand for trained officers. Racingto make up for the deficiency, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall opened schoolsfor officer candidates. In 1942, in seventeen-week training periods, these schoolsproduced more than 54,000 platoon leaders. Closer in sensibility to the civilian pop-ulation, these new officers were the kind of leaders Eisenhower sought.

Most GIs (short for “government issue”), who were the vast majority of draftees,had limited contact with officers at the higher levels and instead forged bonds withtheir company commanders and men within their own combat units. “Everyonewants someone to look up to when he’s scared,” one GI explained. Most of all, sol-diers depended on the solidarity of the group and the loyalty of their buddies to pullthem through the war. Proud to serve in “the best-dressed, best-fed, best-equippedarmy in the world,” the majority of these citizen-soldiers wanted foremost “to get thetask done” and return soon to their families and communities.

Women Enter the MilitaryWith the approach of World War II, Massachusetts Republican Congresswoman EdithNourse Rogers proposed legislation for the formation of a women’s corps. The armyinstead drafted its own bill, which both Rogers and Eleanor Roosevelt supported, creat-ing in May 1942 the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), later changed to Women’sArmy Corps (WAC). In 1942–43, other bills established a women’s division of the navy(WAVES), the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, and the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve.

Guideline 22.3

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Overall, more than 350,000 women served in World War II, two-thirds of themin the WACS and WAVES. As a group, they were better educated and more skilled—although paid less—than the average soldier. However, military policy prohibitedwomen from supervising male workers, even in offices.

Although barred from combat, women were not necessarily protected fromdanger. Nurses accompanied the troops into combat in Africa, Italy, and France,treated men under fire, and dug and lived in their own foxholes. More than1,000 women flew planes, although not in combat missions. Others worked asphotographers and cryptoanalysts. The vast majority remained far from battle-fronts, however, stationed mainly within the United States, where they served inadministration, communications, clerical, or health-care facilities.

The WACS and WAVES were both subject to hostile commentary and bad pub-licity. The overwhelming majority of soldiers believed that most WACS were prosti-tutes, and the War Department itself, fearing “immorality” among women in thearmed forces, closely monitored their conduct and established much stricter rulesfor women than for men. The U.S. Marine Corps even used intelligence officers toferret out suspected lesbians or women who showed “homosexual tendencies” (asopposed to homosexual acts), both causes for dishonorable discharge.

Old Practices and New HorizonsThe Selective Service Act, in response to the demands of African American leaders,specified that “there shall be no discrimination against any person on account ofrace or color.” The draft brought hundreds of thousands of young black men intothe army, and African Americans enlisted at a rate 60 percent above their proportionof the general population. By 1944 black soldiers represented 10 percent of thearmy’s troops, and overall approximately 1 million African Americans served in thearmed forces during World War II. The army, however, channeled black recruits intosegregated, poorly equipped units, which were commanded by white officers. Secretaryof War Henry Stimson refused to challenge this policy, saying that the army could notoperate effectively as “a sociological laboratory.” The majority served in the Signal,

Engineer, and Quartermaster Corps, mainly inconstruction or stevedore work. Only toward theend of the war, when the shortage of infantryneared a crisis, were African Americans permittedto rise to combat status. The all-black 761st TankBattalion, the first African American unit in com-bat, won a Medal of Honor after 183 days inaction. And despite the very small number ofAfrican Americans admitted to the Air Force, the99th Pursuit Squadron earned high marks inaction against the feared German air force, theLuftwaffe. Even the Marine Corps and the CoastGuard agreed to end their historic exclusion ofAfrican Americans, although they recruited andpromoted only a small number.

The ordinary black soldier, sailor, or marineexperienced few benefits from the late-in-the-wargains of a few. They encountered discriminationeverywhere, from the army canteen to the reli-gious chapels. Even the blood banks kept bloodsegregated by race (although a black physician,


WACS and WAVES

1942–1943: Women’s divisions of allmajor armed services created.

Women barred from combat, but notfrom danger.

WACS and WAVES viewed with suspicionand hostility by many male soldiers.

New recruits to the Women’s Army Corps (WAC)pick up their clothing “issue” (allotment).These volunteers served in many capacities,from nursing men in combat to performingclerical and communication duties “stateside”(within the United States). Approximately140,000 women served in the WACS duringWorld War II.

National Archives and Records Administration.

Guideline 22.4

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Dr. Charles Drew, had invented the process for storing plasma). The year 1943 markedthe peak of unrest, with violent confrontations between blacks and whites breakingout at military installations, especially in the South where the majority of AfricanAmerican soldiers were stationed. Toward the end of the war, to improve moraleamong black servicemen, the army relaxed its policy of segregation, mainly in recre-ational facilities. Although enforcement was uneven and haphazard, the new policypaved the way for integration within a decade of the war’s end.

The army also grouped Japanese Americans into segregated units, sendingmost to fight far from the Pacific theater. Better educated than the average soldier,many Nisei soldiers who knew Japanese served stateside as interpreters and transla-tors. When the army decided to create a Nisei regiment, more than 10,000 volunteersstepped forward, only one in five of whom was accepted. The Nisei 442nd fought hero-ically in Italy and France and became the most decorated regiment in the war.

Despite segregation, the armed forces ultimately pulled Americans of all vari-eties out of their communities. Many Jews and other second-generation Europeanimmigrants, for example, described their stint in the military as an “Americanizing”experience. Many Indian peoples left reservations for the first time, approximately25,000 serving in the armed forces. Many Navajo “code talkers,” for example, whoused a special code based on their native language to transmit information amongmilitary units, learned English in special classes established by the marines. For manyAfrican Americans, military service provided a bridge to postwar civil rights agita-tion. Amzie Moore, who later helped to organize the Mississippi Freedom DemocraticParty, traced his understanding that “people are just people” to his experiences in thearmed forces during World War II.

Many homosexuals also discovered a wider world. Despite a policy barring themfrom military service, most slipped through mass screening at induction centers.Moreover, the emotional pressures of wartime, especially the fear of death, encour-aged close friendships, and homosexuals in the military often found more roomthan in civilian life to express their sexual orientation openly. In army canteens, forexample, men often danced with one another, whereas in civilian settings they wouldhave been subject to ridicule or even arrest for such activity. “The war is a tragedy tomy mind and soul,” one gay soldier confided, “but to my physical being, it’s a mem-orable experience.” Lesbian WACS and WAVES had similar tales.

Most soldiers looked back at the war, with all its dangers and discomforts, as thegreatest experience they would ever know. As the New Republic predicted in 1943,they met fellow Americans from every part of the country and recognized for the firsttime in their lives “the bigness and wholeness of the United States.” “Hughie was aGeorgia cracker, so he knew something about moonshine,” remembered one sol-dier. Another fondly recalled “this fellow from Wisconsin we called ‘Moose.’” The armyitself promoted these expectations of new experience. Twenty-Seven Soldiers (1944), agovernment-produced film for the troops, showed Allied soldiers of several nation-alities all working together in harmony.

The Medical CorpsThe chance of being killed in combat was surprisingly small, estimated at less than1 in 50, but the risk of injury was much higher. By the time the war ended, the armyreported 949,000 casualties, including 175,000 who had been killed in action.Although the European Theater produced the greatest number of casualties, thePacific held grave dangers in addition to artillery fire. For the soldiers fighting inhot, humid jungles, malaria, typhus, diarrhea, or dengue fever posed the most com-mon threat to their lives. For the 25th Infantry Division, which landed in Guadalcanal

In this excerpt, Sterling A. Brownrecalls a story concerning wartimeharassment and discrimination of African Americans on the homefront.

This Negro soldier was sitting on a seatopposite to a white man. The bus was notcrowded, and he wasn’t sitting in front of any white. But the driver came backand told him to move. He refused. The driver shouted, “I’m gonna moveyou.” The Negro took his coat off andsaid, “Well I’m fixing to go off and fightfor democracy. I might as well start rightnow.” And I want to tell you that bus driverbacked down. It did me good to see it.

Nisei U.S. citizens born of immigrantJapanese parents.

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in 1943, the malaria-carrying mosquito proved a more formidable enemy thanJapanese forces.

The prolonged stress of combat also took a toll in the form of “battle fatigue.”Despite the rigorous screening of recruits, more than 1 million soldiers suffered atone time or another from debilitating psychiatric symptoms, and the number of mendischarged for neuropsychiatric reasons was 2.5 times greater than in previous wars.The cause, psychiatrists concluded, was not individual weakness but long stints inthe front lines. In France, for example, where soldiers spent up to 200 days in the fieldwithout a break from fighting, thousands cracked, occasionally inflicting wounds onthemselves in order to be sent home. One who simply fled the battlefront, PrivateEddie Slovik, was tried and executed for desertion—the first such execution since theCivil War. In 1944, the army concluded that eight months in combat was the maximumand instituted, when replacements were available, a rotation system to relieveexhausted soldiers.

To care for sick and wounded soldiers, the army depended on a variety of med-ical personnel. Soldiers received first aid training as part of basic training, and theywent into battle equipped with bandages to treat minor wounds. For the most part,however, they relied on the talents of trained physicians and medics. The ArmyMedical Corps sent doctors to the front lines. Working in makeshift tent hospitals,these physicians advanced surgical techniques and, with the use of new “wonder”drugs such as penicillin, saved the lives of many wounded soldiers. Of the soldiers whounderwent emergency surgery on the field, more than 85 percent survived. Overall,less than 4 percent of all soldiers who received medical care died as a result of theirinjuries. Much of the success in treatment came from the use of blood plasma, whichreduced the often lethal effect of shock from severe bleeding. By 1945, the AmericanRed Cross Blood Bank, which was formed four years earlier, had collected more than13 million units of blood from volunteers, converted most of it into dried plasma, andmade it readily available throughout the European Theater.

Grateful for the care of skilled surgeons, many soldiers nevertheless namedmedics the true heroes of the battlefront. Between thirty to forty medics wereattached to each infantry battalion, and they were responsible for emergency firstaid and for transporting the wounded to the aid station and if necessary on to thefield hospital. Many medics were recruited from the approximately 35,000 consci-entious objectors, who were defined by the Selective Service as a person “who, byreason of religious training and belief, is conscientiously opposed to participationin war in any form.”

In the military hospitals, American nurses supplied the bulk of care to recov-ering soldiers. Before World War II, the Army Nurse Corps, created in 1901, wasscarcely a military organization, with recruits earning neither military pay nor rank.To overcome the short supply of nurses, Congress extended military rank to nursesin 1944, although only for the duration and for six months after the war ended. In1945, Congress came close to passing a bill to draft nurses. Like medics, army nurseswent first to training centers in the United States, learning how to dig foxholes anddodge bullets before being sent overseas. By 1945, approximately 56,000 women,including 500 African American women, were on active duty in the Army NurseCorps, staffing medical facilities in every theater of the war.

Prisoners of WarApproximately 120,000 Americans became prisoners of war (POWs). Those capturedby the Germans were taken back to camps—Olfags for officers or Stalags for enlisted

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men—where they sat out the remainder of the war, mainly fighting boredom.Registered by the Swiss Red Cross, they could receive packages of supplies and occa-sionally join work brigades. By contrast, Russian POWs were starved and occasionallymurdered in German camps.

Conditions for POWs in the Pacific were, however, worse than abysmal. Of the20,000 Americans captured in the Philippines early in the war, only 40 percent sur-vived to return home in 1945. At least 6,000 American and Filipino prisoners,beaten and denied food and water, died on the notorious eighty-mile “Death March”through the jungles on the Bataan Peninsula in 1942. After the survivors reachedthe former U.S. airbase Camp O’Donnell, hundreds died weekly in a cesspool ofdisease and squalor.

The Japanese army felt only contempt for POWs; its own soldiers evadedcapture by killing themselves. The Imperial Army assigned its most brutal troopsto guard prisoners and imposed strict and brutal discipline in the camps. In apostwar survey, 90 percent of former POWs from the Pacific reported that they hadbeen beaten. A desire for retribution, as well as racist attitudes, prompted GIs totreat Japanese prisoners far more brutally than enemy soldiers captured in Europeor Africa.

A painting by Sidney Simon of American POWsfreed from Japanese captors at Bilibid prison,in Manila, 1945, after the U.S. reconquest of the Philippines. The battle of the PhilippineSea and the battle of Leyte Gulf during the pre-vious year had nearly broken Japanese resis-tance in the area, but the clean-up processrevealed the awful price that Americans andtheir Filipino allies had paid. As prisoners of war, they had suffered terribly from malnutri-tion and improperly attended wounds and from an unsparing and inhumane Japanesemilitary code of behavior.

Sidney Simon, P.O.W.s at Bilibid Prison, 1945. Oil on canvas,

25 � 30 inches. Center of Military History, U.S. Army.

Out of Class Activity 25.1, World War IISurvivors

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The World at War

D uring the first year of declared war, the Allies remained on the defensive.Hitler’s forces held the European Continent and pounded England withaerial bombardments while driving deep into Russia and across northern

Africa to take the Suez Canal. The situation in the Pacific was scarcely better. Justtwo hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese planes struck the main U.S.base in the Philippines and demolished half the air force commanded by GeneralDouglas MacArthur. Within a short time, MacArthur was forced to withdraw histroops to the Bataan Peninsula, admitting that Japan had practically seized the Pacific.Roosevelt called the news “all bad,” and his military advisers predicted a long fightto victory (see Map 25-1).

But the Allies enjoyed several important advantages: vast natural resources anda skilled workforce with sufficient reserves to accelerate the production of weaponsand ammunitions; the determination of millions of antifascists throughout Europeand Asia; and the capacity of the Soviet Union to endure immense losses. Slowly atfirst, but then with quickening speed, these advantages made themselves felt.

Soviets Halt Nazi DriveThe weapons and tactics of World War II were radically different from those of WorldWar I. Unlike World War I, which was fought by immobile armies kept in trenchesby bursts of machine-gun fire, World War II was a war of offensive maneuvers punc-tuated by surprise attacks. Its chief weapons were tanks and airplanes, combiningmobility and concentrated firepower. Also of major importance were artillery andexplosives, which according to some estimates accounted for more than 30 percentof the casualties. Major improvements in communication systems, mainly two-wayradio transmission and radiotelephony that permitted commanders to stay in con-tact with division leaders, also played a decisive role from the beginning of the war.

Early on, Hitler had used these methods to seize the advantage, purposefullycreating terror among the stricken populations of western Europe as he routed theirarmies. The Royal Air Force, however, fought the Luftwaffe to a standstill in theBattle of Britain, frustrating Hitler’s hopes of invading England. In the summer of1941, he turned his attention to the east, hoping to invade and conquer the SovietUnion before the United States entered the war. But he had to delay the invasion inorder to support Mussolini, whose weak army had been pushed back in North Africaand Greece. The attack on Russia did not come until June 22, six weeks later thanplanned and too late to achieve its goals before the brutal Russian winter began.

The burden of the war now fell on the Soviet Union. From June to September,Hitler’s forces overran the Red Army, killing or capturing nearly 3 million soldiersand leaving thousands to die from exposure or starvation. But Nazi commandersdid not count on civilian resistance. The Soviets rallied, cutting German supply linesand sending every available resource to Soviet troops concentrated just outsideMoscow. After furious fighting and the onset of severe winter weather, the Red Armylaunched a massive counterattack, catching the freezing German troops off guard.For the first time, the Nazi war machine suffered a major setback.

Turning strategically away from Moscow, during the summer of 1942 Germantroops headed toward Crimea and the rich oil fields of the Caucasus. Still set on con-quering the Soviet Union and turning its vast resources to his own use, Hitler decidedto attack Stalingrad, a major industrial city on the Volga River. The Soviets suffered morecasualties during the battles that followed than Americans did during the entire war.

WHAT WERE the main points of Allied

military strategy in both Europe and Asia?

Audio-Visual Aid, “The World at War”

Map 25-1

During World War II, the Allies in Europeremained on the defensive, but starting in 1943, the British and the Americans hadturned the tide of the war, first by takingcontrol of Italy in 1943 and then on D-Day,when they invaded Normandy, France.Leading up to these key turning points,the Allies had a major win near El Alameinin Egypt in October 1942, in which theytook control of North Africa and gained asecure position in the Mediterranean.In the summer of 1943, the Allies beganto advance on southern Italy and by earlySeptember, Italy had surrendered. In June1944, as part of Operation Overload, Alliedforces launched the D-Day attack on Normandy. More than 175,000 troopsand 20,000 vehicles were brought to the shores of Normandy—a featunimaginable in any previous war. About2,500 Allied troops were killed, but withinsix weeks, nearly a million Allied soldierscame ashore and prepared to marchinland. Attention turned to Paris, whereAllied bombers pounded factories produc-ing German munitions. As German soldiersretreated, the French Resistance and rail-way workers gained traction against Nazioccupiers. On August 25, Charles deGaulle arrived in Paris to become the president of the reestablishedFrench Republic. Soon, other occupiedEuropean nations fell to the Allied forces,and the war had turned in their favor,though battles in the European theater didnot conclude until the next year.

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AL P S CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS

Rhin

e R

.

Sept. 1944

July

1944

A

ug. 1

944

SPANISHMOROCCO

Kasserine PassFeb. 14 – 22, 1943

El AlameinOct. 23 – Nov. 5, 1942

SuezCanal

G R E E C E

ALBANIA(Italy)

July 1943

Romeliberated

June 4, 1944

Athens

Parisliberated

Aug. 1944

D-DayJune 6, 1944

London

Battle of the BulgeDec. 16, 1944–

Jan. 31, 1945

NORTHERNIRELAND

BerlinsurrenderedMay 2, 1945

Dresden

Territoryannexedby Hungary

RUTHENIA

Warsaw

DanzigFree

State

LeningradbesiegedSept. 1941–Jan. 19, 1943

PetsamoFinnish territoryannexedby Soviet Union

Moscow

Stalingradbesieged

Aug. 1942–Jan. 31, 1943

Yalta

ICELAND

N O R T H

S E A

A T L A N T I CO C E A N

M E D I TE

RR

AN E A N S E A

B L A C K S E A

CASPIAN

SEA

RE

D SE

A

SLOVAKIA

PORTUGAL

S P A I N

MOROCCO

F R E N C H N O R T HA F R I C A

(Vichy France)Joined Allies Nov. 1942

A L G E R I A

TUNISIA

L I B Y A(Italy)

E G Y P T

TRANSJORDAN

S A U D IA R A B I A

PALESTINE(British)

LEBANON

S Y R I A

I R A Q

CYPRUS(British)

RHODES(Italy)

CRETE(Greece)

T U R K E Y

BULGARIA

SICILY

SARDINIA

CORSICA

VICHYFRANCEoccupiedNov. 1942

NORMANDY

NETHERLANDS

DENMARK

GREATBRITAIN

REPUBLICOF

IRELAND

BELGIUM GERMANY

SWITZ. AUSTRIAHUNGARY

ROMANIA

YUGOSLAVIA

P O L A N D

EASTPRUSSIA

(Germany)

LATVIA

LITHUANIA

ESTONIA

S O V I E T U N I O N

U K R A I N E

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ED

EN

FI N

LA

ND

NO

RW

AY

IT

A

LY

0 500 1000 Miles

0 500 1000 Kilometers

Axis powers beforeWorld War IIExtent of Axis controlearly Nov. 1942

Allies

Neutral nations

Allied Troop movements

Major battles/Allied victories

MAP 25-1The War in Europe The Allies remained on the defensive during the first years of the war, but by 1943 the British and Americans, with an almost endless supply of resources, had turned the tide.

WHAT WERE the key turning points of the war in Europe?

To explore this map further, go to www.myhistorylab.com

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But intense house-to-house and street fighting and a massive Soviet counteroffensivetook an even greater toll on the Nazi fighting machine. By February 1943, the GermanSixth Army had met defeat, overpowered by Soviet troops and weapons. More than100,000 German soldiers surrendered.

Already in retreat but plotting one last desperate attempt to halt the Red Army,the Germans threw most of their remaining armored vehicles into action at Kursk,in the Ukraine, in July 1943. The clash quickly developed into the greatest land bat-tle in history. More than 2 million troops and 6,000 tanks went into action. Afteranother stunning defeat, the Germans had decisively lost the initiative. Their onlyoption was to delay the advance of the Red Army against their homeland.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union had begun to recover from its early losses, evenas tens of millions of its own people remained homeless and near starvation. Assistedby the U.S. Lend-Lease program, by 1942 the Soviets were outproducing Germanyin many types of weapons and other supplies. Nazi officers and German civiliansalike began to doubt that Hitler could win the war. The Soviet victories had turnedthe tide of the war.

The Allied OffensiveIn the spring of 1942, Germany, Italy, and Japan commanded a territory extendingfrom France to the Pacific Ocean. They controlled central Europe and a large sec-tion of the Soviet Union, as well as considerable parts of China and the southwest-ern Pacific. But their momentum was flagging. American shipbuilding outpacedthe punishment Nazi submarines inflicted on Allied shipping, and sub-sinkingdestroyers greatly reduced the submarines’ threat. The United States far outstrippedGermany in the production of landing craft and amphibious vehicles, two of the mostimportant innovations of the war. Also outnumbered by the Allies, the German airforce was limited to defensive action. On land, the United States and Great Britainhad the trucks and jeeps to field fully mobile armies, while German troops marchedin and out of Russia with packhorses.

Still, German forces represented a mighty opponent on the European Continent.Fighting the Nazis almost alone, the Soviets repeatedly appealed for the creation ofa Second Front, an Allied offensive against Germany from the west. The Allies focusedinstead on securing North Africa and then on an invasion of Italy, hoping to movefrom there into central Europe.

On the night of October 23–24, 1942, near El Alamein in the desert of westernEgypt, the British Eighth Army halted a major offensive by the German Afrika Korps,headed by General Erwin Rommel, the famed “Desert Fox.” Although sufferingheavy losses—approximately 13,000 men and more than 500 tanks—British forcesdestroyed the Italian North African Army and much of Germany’s Afrika Korps.Americans entered the war in Europe as part of Operation Torch, the landing ofBritish and American troops on the coast of Morocco and Algeria in November 1942,the largest amphibious military landing to that date. The Allies then fought theirway along the coast, entering Tunis in triumph six months later. With the surrenderof a quarter-million Germans and Italians in Tunisia in May 1943, the Allies con-trolled North Africa and had a secure position in the Mediterranean. During theNorth African campaign, the Allies announced that they would accept nothing lessthan the unconditional surrender of their enemies. In January 1943, Rooseveltand Churchill had met in Casablanca in Morocco and ruled out any possibility ofnegotiation with the Axis powers. Roosevelt’s supporters hailed the policy as a clearstatement of goals, a promise to the world that the scourge of fascism would be com-pletely banished. Stalin, who did not attend the meeting, criticized the policy, fearing

Guideline 21.4


The Beginning of the End

Allies gained footholds in North Africa.

Allies took control of much of Italy.

June 6, 1944: D-Day invasion of Normandy launched.

Operation Torch The Allied invasion of Axis-held North Africa in 1942.

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that it would only increase the enemy’s determination to fight to the end. Other crit-ics similarly charged that the demand for total capitulation would serve to prolongthe war and lengthen the casualty list.

Allied aerial bombing further increased pressure on Germany. Many U.S. lead-ers believed that in the B-17 Flying Fortress, the air force possessed the ultimateweapon, “the mightiest bomber ever built.” The U.S. Army Air Corps described thisbomber as a “humane” weapon, capable of hitting specific military targets and spar-ing the lives of civilians. But when weather or darkness required pilots to depend onradar for sightings, they couldn’t distinguish clearly between factories and schools orbetween military barracks and private homes, and bombs might fall within a rangeof nearly two miles from the intended target. American pilots preferred to bombduring daylight hours, while the British bombed during the night. Bombing mis-sions over the Rhineland and the Ruhr successfully took out many German facto-ries. But the Germans responded by relocating their plants, often dispersing lightindustry to the countryside.

Determined to break German resistance, the Royal Air Force redirected itsmain attack away from military sites to cities, including fuel dumps and public trans-portation. Hamburg was practically leveled. Between 60,000 and 100,000 people werekilled, and 300,000 buildings were destroyed. Sixty other cities were hit hard, leaving20 percent of Germany’s total residential area in ruins. The very worst air raid of thewar—650,000 incendiary bombs dropped on the city of Dresden, destroyingeight square miles and killing 135,000 civilians—had no military value.

The Allied strategic air offensive weakened the German economy and under-mined civilian morale. Moreover, in trying to defend German cities and factories, theLuftwaffe sacrificed many of its fighter planes. When the Allies finally invaded west-ern Europe in the summer and fall of 1944, they would enjoy superiority in the air.

The Allied Invasion of EuropeDuring the summer of 1943, the Allies began to advance on southern Italy. On July 10,British and American troops stormed Sicily from two directions and conquered theisland in mid-August. King Vittorio Emmanuel dis-missed Mussolini, calling him “the most despisedman in Italy,” and Italians, by now disgusted withthe fascist government, celebrated in the streets.Italy surrendered to the Allies on September 8, andAllied troops landed on the southern Italian penin-sula. But Hitler sent new divisions into Italy, occu-pied the northern peninsula, and effectively stalledthe Allied campaign. When the European warended, the German and Allied armies were still bat-tling on Italy’s rugged terrain.

Elsewhere in occupied Europe, armeduprisings against the Nazis spread. The brutal-ized inhabitants of Warsaw’s Jewish ghettorepeatedly rose up against their tormentors dur-ing the winter and spring of 1943. Realizing thatthey could not hope to defeat superior forces,they finally sealed off their quarter, executedcollaborators, and fought invaders, street bystreet and house by house. Scattered revolts fol-lowed in the Nazi labor camps, where military

As part of the air war on Germany, Alliedbombers launched a devastating attack on Dresden, a major economic center, in February 1945. Of the civilians who died,most from burns or smoke inhalation duringthe firestorm, a large number were women andchildren, refugees from the Eastern Front. The city was left in ruins.

Fred Ramage. Getty Images Inc. – Hulton Archive Photos.

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prisoners of war and civilians were being workedto death on starvation rations.

Partisans were active in many sections ofEurope, from Norway to Greece and from Polandto France. Untrained and unarmed by any mili-tary standard, organized groups of men, women,and children risked their lives to distributeantifascist propaganda, taking action against richand powerful Nazi collaborators. They smuggledfood and weapons to clandestine resistance groupsand prepared the way for Allied offensives. As Axisforces grew weaker and partially withdrew, thepartisans worked more and more openly, armingcitizens to fight for their own freedom.

Meanwhile, Stalin continued to push for asecond front. Stalled in Italy, the Allies preparedin early 1944 for Operation Overlord, a campaignto retake the Continent with a decisive counter-attack through France. American and Britishforces began by filling the southern half of

England with military camps. All leaves were canceled. New weapons, such as amphibi-ous armored vehicles, were carefully camouflaged. Fortunately, Hitler had few planesor ships left, so the Germans could defend the coast only with fixed bunkers whoselocation the Allies ascertained. Operation Overlord began with a preinvasion airassault that dropped 76,000 tons of bombs on Nazi targets.

The Allied invasion finally began on “D-Day,” June 6, 1944. Under steadyGerman fire the Allied fleet brought to the shores of Normandy more than175,000 troops and more than 20,000 vehicles—an accomplishment unimaginablein any previous war. Although the Germans had responded slowly, anticipating anAllied strike at Calais instead of Normandy, at Omaha Beach they had prepared theirdefense almost perfectly. Wave after wave of Allied landings met machine-gun andmortar fire, and the tides filled with corpses and those pretending to be dead. Some2,500 troops died, many before they could fire a shot. Nevertheless, in the next sixweeks, nearly 1 million more Allied soldiers came ashore, broke out of Normandy,and prepared to march inland.

As the fighting continued, all eyes turned to Paris, the premier city of Europe.Allied bombers pounded factories producing German munitions on the outskirts ofthe French capital. As dispirited German soldiers retreated, many now hoping onlyto survive, the French Resistance unfurled the French flag at impromptu demon-strations on Bastille Day, July 14. On August 10, railway workers staged one of the firstsuccessful strikes against Nazi occupiers, and three days later the Paris police defectedto the Resistance, which proclaimed in leaflets that “the hour of liberation has come.”General Charles de Gaulle, accompanied by Allied troops, arrived in Paris onAugust 25 to become president of the reestablished French Republic.

One occupied European nation after another swiftly fell to the Allied armies.But the Allied troops had only reached a resting place between bloody battles.

The High Cost of European VictoryIn September 1944, Allied commanders searched for a strategy to end the warquickly. Missing a spectacular chance to move through largely undefended terri-tory and on to Berlin, they turned north instead, intending to open theNetherlands for Allied armies on their way to Germany’s industrial heartland.

Operation Overlord United States andBritish invasion of France in June 1944during World War II.

D-Day June 6, 1944, the day of the firstparatroop drops and amphibious landingson the coast of Normandy, France, in the first stage of Operation Overlordduring World War II.

D-Day landing, June 6, 1944, marked the great-est amphibious maneuver in military history.Troop ships ferried Allied soldiers from Englandto Normandy beaches. Within a month, nearly 1 million men had assembled in France, readyto retake western and central Europe from German forces.

© Bettmann/Corbis.

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Faulty intelligence reports overlooked a well-armed German division at Arnhem,Holland, waiting to cut Allied paratroopers to pieces. By the end of the battle,the Germans had captured 6,000 Americans.

In a final, desperate effort to reverse the Allied momentum, Hitler directed hislast reserves, a quarter-million men, at Allied lines in the Belgian forest of the Ardennes.In what is known as the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans took the Allies by surprise,driving them back 50 miles before they were stopped. This last effort—the bloodiestsingle campaign Americans had been involved in since the battle of Gettysburg—exhausted the German capacity for counterattack. After Christmas Day 1944, theGermans fell back, retreating into their own territory.

The end was now in sight. In March 1945, the Allies rolled across the Rhine andtook the Ruhr Valley with its precious industrial resources. The defense of Germany,now hopeless, had fallen into the hands of young teenagers and elderly men. By thetime of the German surrender, May 8, Hitler had committed suicide in a Berlinbunker and high Nazi officials were planning their escape routes. The casualties ofthe Allied European campaign had been enormous, if still small compared to thoseof the Eastern Front: more than 200,000 killed and almost 800,000 wounded, miss-ing, or dead in nonbattle accidents and unrelated illness.

The War in Asia and the PacificThe war that had begun with Pearl Harbor rapidly escalated into scattered fightingacross a region of the world far larger than all of Europe, stretching from SoutheastAsia to the Aleutian Islands. Japan followed up its early advantage by cutting the sup-ply routes between Burma and China, crushing the British navy, and seizing thePhilippines, Hong Kong, Wake Island, British Malaya, and Thailand. Although Chinaofficially joined the Allies on December 9, 1941, and General Stillwell arrived inMarch as commander of the China-Burma-India theater, the military mission thereremained on the defensive. Meanwhile, after tenacious fighting on the BataanPeninsula and on the island of Corregidor, the U.S. troops not captured or killedretreated to Australia (see Map 25-2).

At first, nationalist and anticolonial sentiment played into Japanese hands.Japan succeeded with only 200,000 men because so few inhabitants of the imperialcolonies of Britain and France would fight to defend them. Japan installed puppet“independent” governments in Burma and the Philippines. But the new Japaneseempire proved terrifyingly cruel. A panicky exodus of refugees precipitated a faminein Bengal, India, which took nearly 3,500,000 lives in 1943. Nationalists from Indochinato the Philippines turned against the Japanese, establishing guerrilla armies that cutJapanese supply lines and prepared the way for Allied victory.

Six months after the disaster at Pearl Harbor, the United States began to regainnaval superiority in the central Pacific and halt Japanese expansion. In an aircraft car-rier duel with spectacular aerial battles during the Battle of the Coral Sea on May 7and 8, the United States blocked a Japanese threat to Australia. A month later, theJapanese fleet converged on Midway Island, which was strategically vital to Americancommunications and the defense of Hawai’i. American strategists, however, thanksto specialists who had broken Japanese codes, knew when and where the Japaneseplanned to attack. The two carrier fleets, separated by hundreds of miles, clashed atthe Battle of Midway on June 4. American planes sank four of Japan’s vital aircraftcarriers and destroyed hundreds of planes, ending Japan’s offensive threat to Hawai’iand the U.S. west coast.

But the war for the Pacific was far from over. By pulling back their offensiveperimeter, the Japanese concentrated their remaining forces. Their commanderscalculated that bitter fighting, with high casualties on both sides, would wear down

Battle of the Bulge German offensive in December 1944 that penetrated deepinto Belgium (creating a “bulge”). Alliedforces, while outnumbered, attackedfrom the north and south. By January1945, the German forces were destroyedor routed, but not without some77,000 Allied casualties.

Eastern Front The area of military operations in World War II located eastof Germany in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

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the American troops. The U.S. command, divided between General DouglasMacArthur in the southwest Pacific and Admiral Chester Nimitz in the central Pacific,needed to develop a counterstrategy to strangle the Japanese import-based economyand to retake strategic islands closer to the homeland.

The Allies launched their counteroffensive campaign on the Solomon Islandsand Papua, near New Guinea. American and Australian ground forces fought togetherthrough the jungles of Papua, while the marines prepared to attack the Japanese

Peking

HankowChungking

Canton

HanoiRangoon

BangkokManila

Port Moresby

Singapore

Hong Kong

ShanghaiNanking

MukdenHarbin

PortArthur

I N D I A N

O C E A N

SOUTHCHINA

SEA

SEAOF

OKHOTSK

B E R I N GS E A

P A C I F I C

O C E A N

S O V I E T U N I O N

OUTERMONGOLIA

MANCHURIA

KOREA

BURMA(Br.)

INDIA

BHUTAN

THAILAND

NETHERLANDS EAST INDIES

MALAYA

ALASKA(U.S.)

A U S T R A L I A

FRENCHINDOCHINA

C H I N A

JAPAN

SUMATRA

BORNEO

JAVA

CELEBES

MINDANAO

LUZON

FORMOSA

PHILIPPINEISLANDS

NEW GUINEASOLOMANISLANDS

NEWHEBRIDES(Br. and Fr.)

MARSHALLISLANDS

CAROLINEISLANDS

MARIANAISLANDS

SAKHALIN

GILBERTISLANDS

NEWCALEDONIA

(Br.)

FIJIISLANDS

(Br.)

A L E U T I A N I S L A N D S

HAWAIIANISLANDS

KURILE IS

LANDS

SAIPAN

(entered the war againstJapan Aug. 8. 1945)

AttuMay 11–29, 1943

Tokyofirebombed May 23, 1945

Iwo JimaFeb. 19–Mar. 16, 1945

OkinawaApril 1-June 22, 1945

BataanJan. 9–April 3, 1942Lingayen Gulf

Jan. 9, 1945Corregidor U.S.

surrender May 5(U.S. counterattack

Jan. 22–Mar. 2, 1945)

Java SeaFeb.–Mar. 1942

Lombok StraitFeb.18–19,1942

BorneoMay–Aug.1945

Coral SeaMay 7–11

1942

Bismarck SeaMar. 2–4, 1943

GuadalcanalAug. 7, 1942–Feb. 9. 1943

TarawaNov. 20–23, 1943

MakinNov. 20–23, 1943

PalauSept. 15–Oct. 13, 1944

Leyte GulfOct. 23–26,1944

NguluOct. 16, 1944

GuamJuly 21, 1944

TinianJuly 24–Aug. 1, 1944

Wake IslandDec. 23, 1941

Midway IslandJune 4–5, 1942

Pearl HarborDec. 7, 1941

Philippine SeaJune 19–21,

1944

KawajaleinFeb. 1–6, 1944

EniwetokFeb. 17–20, 1944

NagasakiAug. 9, 1945

HiroshimaAug. 6, 1945

Tokyo Bay–Japanese surrender signedSept 2, 1945

Kiska

1943

1943

1945

1944 1944 M

acArthur

0 600 1200 Miles

0 600 1200 Kilometers

Extent of Japanesecontrol, August 1942

Japanese forces

Allied forces

Japanese victories

Allied victories

Atomic bombings

MAP 25-2War in the Pacific Across an ocean battlefield utterly unlike the European theater, Allies battled Japanese troops near their homeland.

HOW DID strategies in the Pacific differ from those in Europe?

To explore this map further, go to www.myhistorylab.com

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stronghold of Guadalcanal. American forces ran low on food and ammunition duringthe fierce six-month struggle on Guadalcanal, while the Japanese were reduced to eat-ing roots and berries. American logistics were not always well planned: a week beforeChristmas in the subtropical climate, a shipment of winter coats arrived! But withstrong supply lines secured in a series of costly naval battles, the Americans werefinally victorious in February 1943, proving that they could defeat Japanese forces inbrutal jungle combat.

For the next two years, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, in a strategy known as“island hopping,” pushed to capture a series of important atolls from their well-armedJapanese defenders and open a path to Japan. The first of these assaults, which costmore than 1,000 marines their lives, was on Tarawa, in November 1943, in the GilbertIslands. In subsequent battles in 1944, American forces occupied Guam, Saipan, andTinian in the Marianas Islands, within air range of the Japanese home islands. Inanother decisive naval engagement, the Battle of the Philippine Sea, fought inJune 1944, the Japanese fleet suffered a crippling loss.

In October 1944, General MacArthur led a force of 250,000 to retake thePhilippines. In a bid to defend the islands, practically all that remained of the Japanesenavy threw itself at the American invaders in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largestnaval battle in history. The Japanese lost eighteen ships, leaving the United States incontrol of the Pacific. While MacArthur continued to advance toward Luzon, themarines waged a successful battle on the small but important island of Iwo Jima. Thedeath toll, however, was high, with casualties estimated at nearly 27,000. The groundfighting in the Philippines, meanwhile, cost 100,000 Filipino civilians their lives andleft Manila devastated.

The struggle for the island of Okinawa, 350 miles southwest of the homeislands of Japan and the site of vital airbases, proved even more bloody. The inva-sion of the island, which began on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, was the largestamphibious operation mounted by Americans in the Pacific war. It was met bywaves of Japanese kamikaze (“divine wind”) pilots flying suicide missions in planeswith a 500-pound bomb and only enough fuel for a one-way flight. On the ground,U.S. troops used flame-throwers, each with 300 gallons of napalm, against thedug-in Japanese. More Americans died or were wounded in Okinawa than atNormandy. By the end of June, the Japanese had lost 140,000, including42,000 civilians.

With the war over in Europe, the Allies concentrated on Japan, and theirair and sea attacks on mainland Japan began to take their toll. U.S. submarines dras-tically reduced the ability of ships to reach Japan with supplies. Since the takingof Guam, American bombers had been able to reach Tokyo and other Japanesecities, with devastating results. Massive fire bombings burned thousands of civil-ians alive in their mostly wood or bamboo homes and apartments and left hundredsof thousands homeless.

Japan could not hold out forever. Without a navy or air force, the governmentcould not transport the oil, tin, rubber, and grain needed to maintain its soldiers. GreatBritain and particularly the United States, however, pressed for quick unconditionalsurrender. They had special reasons to hurry. Earlier they had sought a commitmentfrom the Soviet Union to invade Japan, but now they looked beyond the war, deter-mined to prevent the Red Army from taking any territories held by the Japanese.These calculations and the anticipation that an invasion would be extremely bloodyset the stage for the use of a secret weapon that American scientists had been prepar-ing: the atomic bomb.

Island hopping The Pacific campaigns of 1944 that were the American naval versions of the Blitzkrieg.

Map 25-2

The struggle in the Pacific was very dif-ferent from that in Europe; the area of conflict in the Pacific was much greaterthan all of Europe, and the Japanese hadthe advantage of being close to its home-land and having been the aggressor in the region with the bombing of PearlHarbor. Early on, it cut the supply routesbetween Burma and China and seizedthe Philippines, Hong Kong, Wake Island,British Malaya, and Thailand. At first,anticolonial sentiment in these Britishand French colonies favored Japan,because so few inhabitants woulddefend them. But the Japanese werecruel to the colonists and, as a result,they turned against the Japanese, estab-lishing guerrilla armies that prepared the way for Allied victory. Six months after the Pearl Harbor attack, the UnitedStates began to regain naval superiorityin the central Pacific, halting Japaneseexpansion and blocking a Japanesethreat to Australia. The American win atstrategic Midway Island ended Japan’soffensive threat to Hawai’i and the westcoast of the United States. The U.S. com-mand developed a strategy to stranglethe Japanese import-based economy andretake the islands closer to Japan; first on the Solomon Islands and Papua, NewGuinea. In October 1944, the Allies over-took the Philippines. At Okinawa, a fiercebattle produced huge casualties on bothsides. American bombers, having takenGuam, gained a foothold from which to attack Japan directly, and the droppingof atomic bombs on Hiroshima andNagasaki ended the war.

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The Last Stages of War

F rom the attack on Pearl Harbor until mid-1943, President Roosevelt and hisadvisers had focused on military strategy rather than on plans for peace. Butonce the defeat of Nazi Germany appeared in sight, high government officials

began to reconsider their diplomatic objectives. Roosevelt wanted both to crush theAxis powers and to establish a system of collective security to prevent another worldwar. He knew he could not succeed without the cooperation of the other key lead-ers, Stalin and Churchill.

During 1944 and 1945, the “Big Three” met to hammer out the shape of thepostwar world. Although none of these nations expected to reach a final agreement,neither did they anticipate how quickly they would be confronted with momentousglobal events. It soon became clear that the only thing holding the Allies together wasthe mission of destroying the Axis.

The HolocaustNot until the last stages of the war did Americans learn the extent of Hitler’s atroc-ities. As part of his “final solution to the Jewish question,” Hitler had ordered the sys-tematic extermination of not only Jews, but Gypsies, other “inferior races,”homosexuals, and anyone deemed an enemy of the Reich. Beginning in 1933, andaccelerating after 1941, the Nazis murdered as many as 6 million Jews, 250,000 Gypsies,and 60,000 homosexuals, among others.

During the war the U.S. government released little information on what cameto be known as the Holocaust. Although liberal magazines such as the Nation and smallcommittees of intellectuals tried to call attention to what was happening in Germanconcentration camps, major news media like the New York Times and Time magazinetreated reports of Nazi genocide as minor news items. The experience of World War I,during which the press had published stories of German atrocities that proved inmost cases to have been fabricated by the British, had bred a skeptical attitude inthe American public. As late as 1943, only 43 percent of Americans polled believedthat Hitler was systematically murdering European Jews.

Leaders of the American Jewish community,however, were better informed than the generalpopulation, and since the mid-1930s had been peti-tioning the government to suspend the immigra-tion quotas to allow German Jews to take refuge inthe United States. Both Roosevelt and Congressdenied their requests. Even after the United Statesentered the war, the president maintained that theliberation of European Jews depended primarilyon a speedy and total Allied victory. In December1942, he brushed off a delegation that presentedhim with solid evidence of Nazi genocide. Not untilJanuary 1944 did Roosevelt agree to change gov-ernment policy. At that time, Secretary of theTreasury Henry Morgenthau, a Jew himself, gavethe president a report on “one of the greatestcrimes in history, the slaughter of the Jewish peo-ple in Europe,” and suggested that it was anti-Semitism in the State Department that had stalledthe development of an aggressive plan of action.


Preparations for Victory

February 1945: Allies debated plans for postwar world at Yalta.

Soviets solidified their hold on EasternEurope.

July 26, 1945: Potsdam Declarationfailed to produce a definitive responsefrom Japan.

Belsen Camp: The Compound for Women, paintedby American artist Leslie Cole, depicts Belsenas the Allied troops found it when they invadedGermany in 1945.

Leslie Cole, Belsen Camp: The Compound for Women.Imperial War Museum, London.

Holocaust The systematic murder of mil-lions of European Jews and others deemedundesirable by Nazi Germany.

WHAT DIPLOMATIC efforts were

used to end the war and establish the terms

of peace?

Guideline 21.5

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Within a week, in part to avoid scandal, Roosevelt issued an executive order creatingthe War Refugee Board.

American Jews also pleaded with the president for a military strike againstthe rail lines leading to the notorious extermination camp in Auschwitz, Poland.Roosevelt again did not respond. The War Department, however, affirmed thatAllied armed forces would not be employed “for the purpose of rescuing victimsof enemy oppression unless such rescues are the direct result of military operationsconducted with the objective of defeating the armed forces of the enemy.” In short, the government viewed civilian rescue as a diversion from decisive mili-tary operations.

The extent of Nazi depravity was finally revealed to Americans when Alliedtroops invaded Germany and liberated the death camps. Touring the Ohrdruf con-centration camp in April 1945, General Eisenhower found barracks crowded withcorpses and crematories still reeking of burned flesh. “I want every American unit notactually in the front lines to see this place,” Eisenhower declared. “We are told thatthe American soldier does not know what he is fighting for. Now, at least, he willknow what he is fighting against.”

The Yalta ConferenceIn preparing for the end of the war, Allied leaders began to reassess their goals. TheAtlantic Charter, drawn up before the United States had entered the war, stated nobleobjectives for the world after the defeat of fascism: national self-determination, noterritorial aggrandizement, equal access of all peoples to raw materials and collabo-ration for the improvement of economic opportunities, freedom of the seas, disar-mament, and “freedom from fear and want.” Now, four years later, Roosevelt—illand exhausted—realized that neither Great Britain nor the Soviet Union intendedto abide by any code of conduct that compromised its national security or conflictedwith its economic interests in other nations or in colonial territories. Stalin andChurchill soon reached a new agreement, one that projected their respective “spheresof influence” over the future of central Europe.

In early February 1945, Roosevelt held his last meeting with Churchill andStalin at Yalta, a Crimean resort on the Black Sea. Seeking their cooperation, thepresident recognized that prospects for postwar peace also depended on compro-mise. Although diplomats avoided the touchy phrase “spheres of influence”—theprinciple according to which the great powers of the nineteenth century haddescribed their claims to dominance over other nations—it was clear that this prin-ciple guided all negotiations. Neither the United States nor Great Britain did morethan object to the Soviet Union’s plan to retain the Baltic states and part of Polandas a buffer zone to protect it against any future German aggression. In return,Britain planned to reclaim its empire in Asia, and the United States hoped to holdseveral Pacific islands in order to monitor any military resurgence in Japan. Thedelegates also negotiated the terms of membership in the United Nations, whichhad been outlined at a meeting several months earlier.

The biggest and most controversial item on the agenda at Yalta was the Sovietentry into the Pacific war, which Roosevelt believed necessary for a timely Allied vic-tory. After driving a hard bargain involving rights to territory in China, Stalin agreedto declare war against Japan within two or three months of Germany’s surrender.

Roosevelt announced to Congress that the Yalta meeting had been a “great success,”proof that the wartime alliance remained intact. Privately, however, the presidentconcluded that the outcome of the conference revealed that the Atlantic Charterhad been nothing more than “a beautiful idea.”

Yalta Conference Meeting of U.S.President Franklin Roosevelt, BritishPrime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin held in February 1945 to plan the final stages of World War II and postwar arrangements.


Lecture Suggestion 25.2, The Groundwork for Foreign PolicyProblems in the Postwar Era


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The death of Franklin Roosevelt of a stroke on April 12, 1945, cast a dark shadowover all hopes for long-term, peaceful solutions to global problems. Stung by a Republicancongressional comeback in 1942, Roosevelt had rebounded in 1944 to win an unprece-dented fourth term as president. In an overwhelming electoral college victory (432 to 99),he had defeated Republican New York governor Thomas E. Dewey. Loyal Democratscontinued to link their hopes for peace to Roosevelt’s leadership, but the president didnot live to witness the surrender of Germany on May 8, 1945. And now, as new and stillgreater challenges were appearing, the nation’s great pragmatic idealist was gone.

1931 September: Japan occupies Manchuria

1933 March: Adolf Hitler seizes power

May: Japan quits League of Nations

1935 October: Italy invades Ethiopia

1935– Neutrality Acts authorize the president to block 1937 the sale of munitions to belligerent nations

1937 August: Japan invades China

October: Franklin D. Roosevelt calls for internationalcooperation against aggression

1938 March: Germany annexes Austria

September: Munich Agreement lets Germany annexSudetenland of Czechoslovakia

November: Kristallnacht, Nazis attack Jews and destroyJewish property

1939 March: Germany annexes remainder of Czechoslovakia

August: Germany and the Soviet Union signnonaggression pact

September: Germany invades Poland; World War II begins

November: Soviet Union invades Finland

1940 April–June: Germany’s Blitzkrieg sweeps over westernEurope

September: Germany, Italy, and Japan—the Axispowers—conclude a military alliance

First peacetime military draft in American history

November: Roosevelt is elected to an unprecedentedthird term

1941 March: Lend-Lease Act extends aid to Great Britain

May: German troops secure the Balkans

A. Philip Randolph plans March on Washingtonmovement for July

June: Germany invades Soviet Union

Fair Employment Practices Committee formed

August: The United States and Great Britain agree to the Atlantic Charter

December: Japanese attack Pearl Harbor; United Statesenters the war

1942 January: War mobilization begins

February: Executive order mandates internment of Japanese Americans

May–June: Battles of Coral Sea and Midway give the United States naval superiority in the Pacific

August: Manhattan Project begins

November: United States stages amphibious landing in North Africa; Operation Torch begins

1943 January: Casablanca Conference announcesunconditional surrender policy

February: Soviet victory over Germans at Stalingrad

April–May: Coal miners strike

May: German Afrika Korps troops surrender in Tunis

July: Allied invasion of Italy

Summer: Race riots break out in nearly fifty cities

1944 June–August: Operation Overlord and liberation of Paris

November: Roosevelt elected to fourth term

1945 February: Yalta Conference renews American–Sovietalliance

February–June: United States captures Iwo Jima andOkinawa in Pacific

April: Roosevelt dies in office; Harry Truman becomespresident

May: Germany surrenders

July–August: Potsdam Conference

August: United States drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Japan surrenders

CHRONOLOGY

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The Atomic BombRoosevelt’s death made cooperation among the Allied nations much more diffi-cult. His successor, Harry Truman, who had been a Kansas City machine politician,a Missouri judge, and a U.S. senator, lacked diplomatic experience as well asRoosevelt’s personal finesse. As a result, negotiations at the Potsdam Conference,held just outside Berlin from July 17 to August 2, 1945, lacked the spirited coop-eration characteristic of the wartime meetings of Allied leaders that Roosevelthad attended. The American, British, and Soviet delegations had a huge agenda,including reparations, the future of Germany, and the status of other Axis powerssuch as Italy. Although they divided sharply over most issues, they held fast to thedemand of Japan’s unconditional surrender.

It was during the Potsdam meetings that Truman first learned about the suc-cessful testing of an atomic bomb in New Mexico. Until this time, the United Stateshad been pushing the Soviet Union to enter the Pacific war as a means to avoid a costlyU.S. land invasion, and at Potsdam Truman secured Stalin’s promise to be in thewar against Japan by August 15. But after Secretary of War Stimson received a cablereading “Babies satisfactorily born,” U.S. diplomats concluded that Soviet assistancewas no longer needed to bring the war to an end.

On August 3, 1945, Japan wired its refusal to surrender. Three days later, theArmy Air Force B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the bomb that destroyed the Japanesecity of Hiroshima. As estimated 40,000 people died instantly; in the following weeks100,000 more died from radiation poisoning or burns; by 1950, the death tollreached 200,000.

An editorialist wrote in the Japanese Nippon Times, “This is not war, this is noteven murder; this is pure nihilism . . . a crime against God which strikes at the verybasis of moral existence.” In the United States, several leading religious publicationsechoed this view. The Christian Century interpreted the use of the bomb as a “moralearthquake” that made the long-denounced use of poison gas by Germany in WorldWar I utterly insignificant by comparison. Albert Einstein, whose theories about theatom provided the foundation for Manhattan Project, observed that the atomic bombhad changed everything except the nature of man.

Most Americans learned about the atomic bomb for the first time on August 7,when the news media reported the destruction and death it had wrought in Hiroshima.But concerns about the implications of this new weapon were soon overwhelmed byan outpouring of relief when Japan surrendered on August 14 after a second bombdestroyed Nagasaki, killing another 70,000 people.

The Allied insistence on unconditional surrender and the decision to use theatomic bomb against Japan remain two of the most controversial aspects of the war.Although Truman stated in his memoirs, written much later, that he gave the orderwith the expectation of saving “a half a million American lives” in ground combat,no such official estimate exists. An intelligence document of April 30, 1946, states,“The dropping of the bomb was the pretext seized upon by all leaders as the reasonfor ending the war, but [even if the bomb had not been used] the Japanese wouldhave capitulated upon the entry of Russia into the war.” There is no question,however, that the use of nuclear force did strengthen the U.S. diplomatic mis-sion. It certainly intimidated the Soviet Union, which would soon regain its sta-tus as a major enemy of the United States. Truman and his advisers in the StateDepartment knew that their atomic monopoly could not last, but they hoped thatin the meantime the United States could play the leading role in building thepostwar world.


Guideline 21.6

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922

Norman Rockwell’s “Rosie, the Riveter”

During his long career as an artist-illustrator, Norman Rockwell published forty-seven covers of the popular family magazine The Saturday Evening Post, all venerating var-ious aspects of American life. “Rosie, the Riveter” appeared on the magazine’s cover

May 29, 1943, and virtually enshrined women’s contribution to the war effort.Now an iconic image, Rosie was modeled on a real-life woman, a telephone operator in

Vermont. Rockwell took advantage of his artistic license by making Rosie older and more mus-cular than his slight nineteen-year-old model. There is no doubt, though, that Rockwell cap-tured the spirit of wartime patriotism. The self-confident Rosie takes obvious pride in her work,keeping her riveter on her ample lap even during lunchtime. A halo encircles her head, theAmerican flag waves in the background. To seal the message, Rockwell shows Rosie crushingHitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf, under her penny loafer.

In calling attention to Rosie’s impressive biceps, Rockwell nevertheless attended tothe small details that assure viewers that his defense worker has lost none of her feminin-ity. Moreover, Rockwell does not show Rosie riveting but instead eating a ham sandwichthat she undoubtedly made at home. ■

IN WHAT ways does Rockwell’s paintingconvey ideals related to gender roles during the war?

Printed by permission of the Norman Rockwell FamilyAgency. Copyright © 1943 the Norman Rockwell FamilyEntities. © 1943 SEPS: Licensed by Curtis Publishing,Indianapolis, IN. All rights reserved:wwwcurtispublishing.com

71193_25_ch25_p0886-0927 4/12/10 4:23 PM Page 922


Conclusion

The new tactics and weapons of the Second World War, such as massive airraids and the atomic bomb, made warfare incomparably more deadlythan before to both military and civilian populations. Between 40 mil-

lion and 50 million people died in World War II—four times the number in WorldWar I—and half the casualties were women and children. More than405,000 Americans died, and more than 670,000 were wounded. Although slightcompared to the casualties suffered by other Allied nations—more than 20 mil-lion Soviets died during the war—the human cost of World War II for Americanswas second only to that of the Civil War.

Coming at the end of two decades of resolutions to avoid military entangle-ments, the war pushed the nation’s leaders to the center of global politics and intorisky military and political alliances that would not outlive the war. The UnitedStates emerged the strongest nation in the world, but in a world where the prospectsfor lasting peace appeared increasingly remote. If World War II raised the nation’sinternational commitments to a new height, its impact on ordinary Americans wasnot so easy to gauge. Many new communities formed as Americans migrated in massnumbers to new regions that were booming as a result of the wartime economy.Enjoying a rare moment of full employment, many workers new to well-paying indus-trial jobs anticipated further advances against discrimination. Exuberant at theAllies’ victory over fascism and the return of the troops, the majority were optimisticas they looked ahead.

DOCUMENT-BASED QUESTIONDirections: This exercise requires you to construct a valid essay that directlyaddresses the central issues of the following question. You will have to use factsfrom the documents provided and from the chapter to prove the position you takein your thesis statement.

What impact did World War II have on the status within Americansociety of minorities and women? Assess and describe both short-and long-range changes that may have occurred.

Document A“We Can Do It!” by J. Howard Miller was one of the more famous of the wartimeposters urging women to enter defense industry work. It presents a new image ofwomen as strong, self-reliant, and forceful. Millions of women took on some kind ofwar work for the duration. Compare this poster against the photo on page 897 of awoman working in a munitions factory. Now look at the photo of women in uniformon page 906. Some 350,000 women would serve in uniform during World War II.

• Would this experience change public perceptions of the role and status of women in American society?• Would women change their own perceptions of their roles and status?

Suggested Answer:

Successful essays should note:• How World War II and women’s contri-

butions to the war changed public per-ceptions of the role and status of women in American society(Document A)

• How women changed their own per-ceptions of their roles and status afterWorld War II (Document A)

• Dellie Hahne’s first-hand account of how the attitudes of women towardthemselves changed as a result of World War II (Document B)

• The causes, during time of war, thatthreatened Philip Randolph’s march on Washington, D.C. and why it wascalled off (Document C)

• FDR’s Executive Order 8802 and whatit stated (Document C)

71193_25_ch25_p0886-0927 4/12/10 4:23 PM Page 923


Document B

There was one good thing came out of it. I had friends whose motherswent to work in factories. For the first time in their lives, they workedoutside the home. They realized that they were capable of doing some-thing more than cook a meal. I remember going to Sunday dinner one ofthe older women invited me to. She and her sister at the dinner tablewere talking about the best way to keep their drill sharp in the factory. Ihad never heard anything like this in my life. It was just marvelous. I wastickled. . . . I think the beginning of the women’s movement had its seedsright there in World War Two.*

• Dellie Hahne was a young girl who lived through World War I. Later she related to an historian what she had seen change about the attitudes of women toward themselves as a resultof that experience. Was she correct?

Document CA. Philip Randolph threatened a march on Washington, D.C. As the textbook states,Roosevelt responded with Executive Order 8802, which promised “no discrimination

* From THE GOOD WAR: An Oral History of World War II by Studs Terkel. Reprintedby permission of Donadio & Olson, Inc. Copyright © 1984 by Studs Terkel.

• Why Japanese internment camps werecreated and the living conditions withinthe camps (Document C)

• What became of Japanese Americanproperty that was seized during WorldWar II

• African American and MexicanAmerican perceptions of their own sta-tus during World War II and if, or how,they felt their conditions were improv-ing (Document C)

• What Executive Order 9981 stated andthe American public’s reaction to it(Document D)

• If Executive Order 9981 is a perma-nent change in the status of AfricanAmericans and why (Document D)

National Archives and Records Administration

71193_25_ch25_p0886-0927 4/12/10 4:23 PM Page 924


in the employment of workers in defense industries.” Randolph issued a poster threat-ening that march. The poster read as follows:

WHY SHOULD WE MARCH?

15,000 Negroes Assembled at St. Louis, Missouri

20,000 Negroes Assembled at Chicago, Illinois

23,500 Negroes Assembled at New York City

Millions of Negro Americans All Over This

Great Land Claim the Right to be Free!

FREE FROM WANT!

FREE FROM FEAR!

FREE FROM JIM CROW!

Now look at the painting below by Byron Takashi Tsuzuki of the internment campfor Japanese Americans. Contrast that against the painting by Horace Pippin andthe poem by Langston Hughes on pages 902–903.

• Examine the description by Karl G.Yoneda of the Manzanar internment camp. What happenedto Japanese Americans during World War II and why?

• Did all African Americans believe their status had improved during World War II?• Did Mexican Americans perceive a change in their status during World War II?

Byron Takashi Tsuzuki, Forced Removal, Act II, 1944. Japanese American National Museum, Collection of August

and Kitty Nakagawa.

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Document DShocked at the lynching of uniformed African American soldiersreturning from military service, President Truman issued ExecutiveOrder 9981 on July 26, 1948, which stated: “It is hereby declared tobe the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatmentand opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regardto race, color, religion, or national origin.” This headline appeared inthe July 31, 1948 issue of the Chicago Defender, one of the more promi-nent African American newspapers in the nation.

• Is this evidence of a permanent change in the status of African Americans?


PREP TESTSelect the response that best answers each question or best completes each sentence.

Courtesy of Library of Congress

Answer Key

1-D 4-A 7-C 10-D 13-C2-B 5-D 8-A 11-B 14-D3-C 6-E 9-E 12-E

1. During most of the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt:a. supported policies that directly involved the United

States in efforts to pacify Germany and Japan.b. wanted to keep the United States neutral but could

not because of Americans’ commitment to war.c. understood that the only way to end the Great

Depression was for a major war to break out in Europe.d. concentrated on domestic concerns and did not

develop specific policies regarding events overseas.e. shifted his focus from social and domestic problems to

the opportunity of U.S. colonization and imperialism.

2. Following his reelection in 1940, President Rooseveltproposed a major effort to help the Allies known as:a. cash-and-carry.b. the Lend-Lease Act.c. massive retaliation.d. the Roosevelt doctrine.e. Big Stick diplomacy.

3. The War Powers Act of 1941:a. gave President Roosevelt broad power to conduct the

war, but the law had no influence after the war.b. was an attempt by Congress to gain control over the

executive branch in conducting the war effort.c. established broad executive authority that would

shape presidential power even after the war ended.d. specifically declared that the president did not have

the power to suspend civil liberties during the war.e. allowed the legislative branch to impose conditions on

which the executive branch may only exercise its power.

4. World War II:a. dramatically changed the role that women played in

the American economy.b. did nothing to improve the economic status of women

and racial minorities.

c. was the first time that a significant number of factoryworkers were women.

d. provided some job opportunities for women but didnot produce lasting changes.

e. resulted in no change or improvement forAmerican women.

5. On the home front between 1941 and 1945:a. commodity rationing meant that civilians were not

much better off than they were during the Depression.b. the fear of Japan and Germany created a unity that

eliminated most social divisions in the United States.c. families who had members serving in the armed forces

were the only people who suffered from the war.d. Americans enjoyed higher wages, but in other ways

they had to make some sacrifices to support the war.e. wartime conditions and factors had no effect on civil-

ians working in the home front.

6. The “Double V” campaign was:a. President Roosevelt’s wartime policy of pursuing total

war against both Germany and Japan.b. the cooperation of men fighting on the war front

while women stayed to work in factories and providefor their families.

c. the realization that victory in the war depended onmilitary campaigns and also on civilian support.

d. the strategy of opening up a western front againstGermany while the Russians fought from the east.

e. the effort by African Americans to help win the warand also to win more civil rights for themselves.

7. During World War II:a. Jim Crow discrimination led to policies that prohib-

ited African Americans from joining the armed forces.b. the U.S. Army integrated by allowing African

Americans to serve in previously all-white units.

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c. the U.S. Army took some initial steps that eventuallyhelped end segregation in the armed forces.

d. the U.S. Air Force was created and was the firstbranch of the armed forces to be integrated.

e. the United States only allowed African Americansto join the armed forces as cooks and other non-combat duties.

8. Following the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor:a. the United States faced serious threats but also

enjoyed a number of strategic advantages.b. most Americans were confident that the United

States would win the war quickly and easily.c. things went poorly for the Allies in Europe, but the

Japanese were not a major threat in the Pacific.d. the United States made a strategic error by declaring

war against Germany and creating a second front.e. the Japanese posed a major threat in the Pacific that

resulted in the abandonment of U.S. forces on theEuropean front.

9. A critical turning point in the war in Europe was the:a. dropping of an atomic bomb on Germany.b. Allied invasion of the Balkans in 1942.c. Allied invasion on the beaches of Normandy.d. liberation of Paris by Free-French forces.e. Russian victories at Stalingrad and at Kursk.

10. The Allied air campaign against Germany:a. was the most important element in defeating the Nazis.b. concentrated entirely on bombing important

military targets.c. did very little to help the armed forces defeat the

German army.d. provided important benefits to the military cam-

paigns in Europe.e. had no effect on the German blitzkrieg or

European campaign.

11. When the war ended in Europe in May 1945:a. Adolf Hitler was placed on trial as a war criminal.b. millions of people had died as a result of the conflict.c. American forces occupied all of Germany.d. the conflict had produced relatively few casualties.e. Japan quickly surrendered after they saw their

ally beaten.

12. The strategy the United States employed in the Pacificwas known as:a. hunt and peck.b. total annihilation.c. brinkmanship.d. search and destroy.e. island hopping.

13. At the wartime conference at Yalta:a. the Allies established a postwar policy based on self-

determination of peoples.b. the United States took steps to keep Russia out of the

war against Japan.c. the Allies implicitly accepted the idea of postwar

spheres of influence.d. the Russians mediated a peace settlement with

the Japanese.e. the Allies asserted complete democracy on all of

occupied Germany.

14. As a result of World War II:a. the Allies created a world in which there would be

very little possibility for future conflicts.b. neither Germany nor Japan would ever again play

important roles in international affairs.c. the English quickly reestablished their empire and

were once again the world’s leading nation.d. the United States emerged as the strongest nation in

a world facing continued threats to peace.e. All nations were severely fatigued and no country

emerged with the same dominating force as in thepre-World War II era.

For additional study resources for this chapter, go toOut of Many, AP* Edition at www.myhistorylab.com

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