U.S. in World War II Objectives
Describe challenges & successes mobilizing for war
Describe how war impacted Americans at home
Summarize how Allies win war in Europe
Describe Allied offensive against Japanese
Explain why Atomic bomb droppedDescribe how war affected
minorities
Dec. 7, 1941 “Day of Infamy”
President Roosevelt Addresses Congress Dec. 8, 1941Declare war on Japan; Join Allies
U.S. Enters the War Enlarged Military
5 million volunteered
Selective Service○10 million drafted○8 weeks training
Propaganda
Wartime Production 1942 - War Production Board
Industries changeover to war materials 1943 - Office of War Mobilization
Centralized resources-gov’t decidesFord Motor Co. – B-24 Liberator bombers
○Assembly line techniquesHenry Kaiser – mass production
○Liberty Ships – production time reduced 200 to 40 days
Ford’s Willow Run Factory B-24 Bombers
Liberty Ships Under Construction
Liberty Ships
Wartime Production Unemployment vanishes By 1945
Thousands planes, ships, rifles, tanks, armored cars, etc., being produced
Wages go up Cost of living goes up Union membership goes up Federal debt goes up
$43B
- $2
60B
War at Home Shortages & rationing
Food supply downInflation up – Office of Price AdministrationFair distribution of scarce items
ActivitiesReading, music, baseball, movies
○ Abbott & CostelloBirthrate increasesNight time blackout drillsTin collection drives
Rationing
War at Home
Victory Gardens supply produce for troops & familiesTomatoes, peas, radishesParking lots, playgrounds
Office of War Information - 1942PropagandaMaintain morale and support for war effort
○ Hire artists – strengthen patriotic feelings○ Norman Rockwell – Four Freedoms
Victory Gardens & Propaganda
Norman Rockwell, artist
Wartime Diversity Issues
1,000,000 African Americans1st supporting rolesLate 1942 – serve in
separate units 300,000 Mexican Americans 33,000 Japanese Americans 25,000 Native Americans 13,000 Chinese Americans
– “just carve on my tombstone, ‘here lies a black man killed fighting a yellow man for the protection of a white man.’”
Wartime Diversity Issues Tuskegee Airmen – 1st
AA flying unit Late 1944 – combat
units integrate
Philip RandolphThreatened March on
Washington for “right to work and fight for our country.”
• FDR issued executive order – Full & equitable participation of all workers in defense industry – “no discrimination of race, creed, color, or national origin.”
Navajo Code Talkers
Women in the WarWomen
WAVES - NavySPAR
○Coast GuardWAFS
○women’s auxiliary firing squadron
WASP ○air force service pilots
–WAAC (WAC)• Women’s Auxiliary Army Corp.
Women at Home By 1944
6 million workers were women
Myth – women were too slow, not strong enough
Paid 60% of what men make
“Rosie” encouraged women to work
“Rosie the Riveter”
Minorities and the War Despite discrimination
– minority groups get chance to show what they can do & see advancement in opportunities
WAR FOR EUROPE & N. AFRICA
Churchill & Roosevelt
Dec. 22, 1941 Whitehouse meeting• Over 3 weeks,
Churchill convinced FDR that Hitler was larger threat than Japan
• 1st military goal:○Defeat Germany &
Italy
War Strategy
Battle of the AtlanticGerman Wolf Packs – groups of subs Goal
Cutoff Allied supply lines-food, arms, oil, tanks, planes, etc.
87 ships sunk in 4 months 681 in 7 months Battle went on for years
If Allies didn’t win this “war,” WW2 would have been lost
US Ships, planes help Britain win
Fighting Back – War in Atlantic Fighting German U-boats, submarines
FDR says “Shoot on sight”
U.S. fights back against U-boats U.S. Convoys formed Equipped with radar, sonar Allows U.S. to find & destroy German
U-boats faster then can be built. 140 Liberty Ships/month
Hitler Attacks Soviets June 1941
Hitler attacks Soviet Union ○ Despite Nonaggression Pact
Invaded over 1,800 milesCaptured 2 million Russian
soldiers by Nov.Germany halted 25 miles outside
of Moscow○Russian winter set in○Fierce Russian resistance
Stalingrad & Leningrad Germans push towards
Stalingrad & Leningrad Deadliest battle in
human history Oil in Caucasus Bomb, burn Hand-to-hand combat Russians want to
surrender Germans hold 90% of
city by winter ’42
Soviets to Stalingrad
Winter – advance tanks over ice
Trap Germans in city Soldiers starve
Want to surrender Hitler – No!
Jan ’43 surrender Soviets move toward
Germany
NORTH AFRICAN CAMPAIGN• Not enough troops to invade France – yet!
• Help Britain in N. Africa• Fighting since 1940• Success in Egypt & Libya• “Soft underbelly of Axis Powers” British General
Bernard Montgomery
NORTH AFRICAN CAMPAIGN
U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower
German General Erwin Rommel
OPERATION TORCH
Fighting in N. Africa & Italy
Allies need to capture North Arica so they can get into Italy
Very difficult to fight in desert
Hitler sends 20,000 more troops
German General Rommel – called Desert Fox because he’s so good at fighting with tanks in the desert
Fighting in N. Africa & Italy US loses at Kasserine Pass“America losses her battle innocence”
British & US combine forces By May 1943 - Germans & Italians in North
Africa surrender to Allied troops
Fighting in N. Africa & Italy Allies capture Sicily Mussolini stripped of power, arrested
“Most hated man in Italy” - KilledHe & mistress hung upside down
Eventually, Allies drive Axis powers out of ItalyThousands of soldiers dieJune 1944, Allied forces won
Italian Campaign - Bloody Anzio
Planning for D-Day Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill meet Plan to invade France from Southern
Great Britain In preparation for it
Carpet bomb Germany
Planning for D-Day Carpet bombing of Germany
Dropped 2,697,473 bombsKilled 305,000 civiliansDamaged 5.5 million homesWiped out railroads, bridges, oil fields,
etc.Goal: Stop Germany’s ability to move
troops to Normandy beaches once attack starts
Hamburg
Operation Overlord Goal: Invade NW Europe to reach
Germans General Eisenhower – Supreme
CommanderOperation Neptune: Establish a
beachhead in Normandy, France -- “D-Day: June 6, 1944”
Troops: British, U.S., Canadian, Polish, Dutch, Belgian, French
Phantom Army Fake radio messages Double agents Phony military base – Dover, England
Buildings, Planes, tanks, jeeps, housing
Made of cardboard, wood, rubber, paper
Led Germans to believe attack would be at CalaisNarrowest point of English Channel
Operation Overlord
Operation Overlord23,000 paratroopers behind enemy
linesOver 150,000 troops land on beachesCharge enemy lines on open beachesMassive bombardment, but massive
devastationChaos – screaming, soldiers hit left &
right, bodies everywhere, nothing to hide behind
Results: Two week duration Allies held 80 mile strip of beachheads. Causalities were atrocious
Mulberry Harbor Artificial harbor built at the beaches
Towed huge concrete portsSunk 70 old ships as breakwaters
Beginning of End for Hitler >4,600 invasion craft and warships >1,000 bombers hit German defenses >14,000 aircraft sorties Took 60 miles of Normandy coast 12,000 casualties in prep for D-Day D-Day: 10,000 Allied casualties – 2,500 dead Total
>425,000 Allied and German troops killed, wounded or missing in Battle for Normandy
Major Victory and Turning Point• Beginning of end for Hitler– Within one year, Germany surrenders– 1 week after D-Day .5 million troops ashore– Late July – 2 million Allied troops in France
• French Resistance & Allied forces free Paris - Aug. 25, 1944
• Charles de Gaulle takes over French provisional government
Allies Take Back France Massive air and land strike against St. Lo.
General Omar Bradley Broke German line of defense Led way for . . .
Third Army to reach Seine River August 25, 1944 Under U.S. General George Patton &French resistance fighters French capital taken back by FrenchGeneral Charles de Gaulle
Battle of the Bulge October 1944
U.S. captured first German town, Aachen
Mid-December German counteroffensive To recapture Belgian Port of Antwerp Drive 60 miles into Allied territory Creates “bulge”
Battle of the Bulge Generals Patton & Bradley
1st & 3rd Armies push Germans back to Germany
Battle lasted 1 month Largest loss in life on the Western
front Germans: lost 120,000 troops, 600
tanks, and 1,600 planes 600,000 U.S. troops involved
○ 80,000 killed, wounded or captured
Germans: Knew couldn’t win the war
Liberation of Europe Allied troops march east towards heart
of Germany Soviets keep moving westward across
PolandFind Concentration campsMajdanek – thousands starving, gas
chambersTroops in the west find more camps,
horrors
Stalin, Roosevelt & Churchill
Yalta Conference - Feb. 1945Results• Divided Germany into four zones• Poland & Eastern Europe-free elections• S.U. declares
war against Japan• S.U. will join
United Nations
Goodbye Roosevelt April 12, 1945 Roosevelt passes
awayStrokePosing for a portrait
Harry Truman 33rd President V.P. to Roosevelt Former Senator of Missouri Weak relationship with
RooseveltNo idea of atomic
weaponForeign affairs new to
him
Germany’s Last Straw
April 25, 1945 U.S. and Soviet forces
meet at Torgau, Germany on Elbe River
Marking the Soviet Union's victory, a soldier raises the Soviet flag over the German Reichstag in Berlin.
•Soviet Army storms Berlin•Destroyed Berlin -- house-to-house
Hitler Meets His End
April 29, 1945 Hitler married Eva Braun Wrote last address to
German people Would not surrender;
rather die. April 30,1945
Commits suicide with wife and dog.
Has bodies burned
Germany Surrenders May 7,1945,
Germans Surrender
V-E day (Victory over Europe Day) May 8
DEFEAT OF GERMANYV-E Day - Victory in Europe 5/8/45
FINISHING WAR WITH JAPAN
Japanese Victories Japan captured:
Guam, Wake Island, Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaya, Burma
US had been in Philippines since late 1800s
Drove out General McArthur -commanded US & Filipino troops in Philippines
Japanese troops put Bataan under siege General MacArthur
Bataan Death March Japanese captured thousands of US
and Filipino troops
Made them march 65 miles to a prison camp
They were starving, no water
Civilians tried to give them food, but soldiers shot them, if they ate it
War with Japan 1942 – Tokyo Bombed Battle of Coral Sea – May
1942 Strategy – Island hopping
Battle of Midway -1942Guadalcanal
Leyte Gulf, Philippines - 1944
New defense tactic - Kamikaze “Divine Wind” - Suicide bombers 7,465 Kamikazes flew to their deaths
–120 US ships sunk, many more damaged
–3,048 Allied sailors killed, another 6,025 wounded
–-80,000 Japanese deaths
Iwo Jima 700 Miles from Japan – fighting grows fierce Took over a month
to secure island 110,000 Allied
soldiers invade25,000 casualties
>20,000 JapaneseOnly 200 left to
surrender
“. . . uncommon valor was a common virtue.”
Mount Suribachi
Okinawa 350 miles from
Japan Japanese soil 2,000 Kamikazes &
Banzai charges 180,000 Allied
troops50,000 U.S.
casualties Costliest battle in the
PacificU.S.: How will we win? How many more lost lives?
End of the War – Atomic Bomb 1939 – Albert Einstein letter to FDR Manhattan Project organized 1941
○ Robert Oppenheimer – director○ Los Alamos, New Mexico – 3,000 workers○ April 1945 – FDR dies – Truman’s decision○ July 16, 1945: 1st test in desert
Aug. 6 Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima
80,000 instantly dead Aug. 9 Bockscar dropped “Fat Man” on
Nagasaki74,000 instantly dead
HiroshimaAfter
Bombing of Nagasaki
Nagasaki Before/After
“My God, what have we done.” Robert Lewis, Co-pilot Enola Gay
Why Did U.S. Drop A-Bomb? Save American lives – Japanese would fight
to bitter end Invasion of Japan would have been worst
battle of entire war – millions would die Truman wants to end war quickly – wants
Japan to surrender Also, demonstrate U.S. military power to
Soviets – foreshadowing of Cold War to come
“Times Square Kiss”
• Aug. 14, 1945 Japan surrenders
• Aug. 15 - V-J day
• Sept. 2 – Official surrender aboard USS Missouri
• MacArthur leads Japan, writes Constitution
V-J Day – Victory Over Japan
Japanese Internment President Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066 –
Feb. 1942Authorizes Secretary of War to remove “aliens” from
military zones on West CoastWar Relocation Authority moved 110,000 Japanese
citizens and non-citizens to camps○ Located in remote locations○ Lost homes, businesses, assets○ Surrounded by barbed wire○ Limited bathrooms, eating areas○ Korematsu v. U.S. – Supreme Court rules
necessary – “military imperative”○ Leave camps in 1945
Reparations Considered one of worst violations of
peoples’ civil liberties 1988
U.S. government apologizesPays $20,000 to surviving
internees Despite discrimination
17,000 Nisei volunteer for military
Nuremberg Trials International Military Tribunal Charge Nazi leaders – crimes against
peace and humanity, war crimes 12 of 24 receive death sentences Establish principle
People are responsible for their own actions
“Just following orders” doesn’t fly
Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
Burchett was among the first to witness and describe radiation sickness.
The patterns of clothes burnt by the heat rays.
on a chunk of rubble with his Baby Hermes typewriter. His dispatch began:
"In Hiroshima, thirty days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly-people who were uninjured in the cataclysm from an unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague."
He continued, tapping out the words that still haunt to this day: "Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller has passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world."
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