World War II

Key Questions

• How does the US get involved in WWII? How is the lead-up to war similar to, or different from, the lead-up to WWI?

• What are the international conditions that lead to war?

• How does WWII change America, economically and socially?

The Four Freedoms: an concept to

promote unity during WWII

Road to War

• Disintegration of international rule of law

• Asia: Japanese expansion in China

• Europe: Hitler’s aggression

• European policy of “appeasement”

Japanese Expansion

Map: The Omaha Project, http://theomahaproject.org/

German Expansion

Map: The Omaha Project, http://theomahaproject.org/

Isolationism

• Americans saw threat as distant, some approved of Germany

• Many thought WWI involvement had been a mistake

• Neutrality Acts in Congress, beginning 1935

War in Europe

• 1938: Munich Agreement

• 1939: Stalin proposes alliance to oppose Germany, then signs non-aggression pact with Hitler

Cartoons like these reflected surprise that Hitler and Stalin, old enemies, had made a non-agression pact.

War in Europe

• 1939-1940 German blitzkrieg (lightning-war)

• 1940: Germany, Italy, Japan form Axis

• 1940-1941: Battle of Britain

Map from MyHistoryLab.com

Toward Intervention

• FDR sees Hitler as a threat, but most Americans want to stay out of war

• 1940: “cash and carry” arms to Britain

Toward Intervention

• Dissent: America First Committee -

• 100,000s of members

• Celebrities: including Henry Ford, Father Coughlin, Charles A. Lindbergh

• Check out a speech by Charles Lindbergh to America First on the next slide!

PM Magazine, September 18,

1941

Dr. Seuss was a political cartoonist

before he was a children’s book

author: check out this reaction to

Lindbergh!

PM Magazine, September 5, 1941

Toward Intervention

• 1940: FDR runs for third term, wins

• 1941: Lend-Lease Act

British women carry U.S. rifles sent toBritain under the lend-lease agreement. Source: pbs.org

Pearl Harbor

• Focus on Europe until late November 1941

• December 7, 1941: Japanese planes bomb naval base at Pearl Harbor

• Surprise attack - 2,000 US servicemen killed

• FDR declares war

Map from MyHistoryLab.com

Interactive Map: http://wpscms.pearsoncmg.com/wps/media/objects/3052/3125662/IM0053.swf

Map from Perry-Castañeda Collection, UT-Austin

Casualties of War• 13.6 million German casualties

in WWII; 10 million from Russian front

• Millions of Poles and at least 20 million Russians died as soldiers and civilian victims of starvation, disease, and massacres by German soldiers

• Mass extermination of “undesirables” - Slavs, gypsies, homosexuals, above all Jews - 6 million Jews died in Nazi death camps

Conclusions: US in WWII

• As in WWI, public hesitant to get involved in war

• FDR’s leadership is decisive in road to war

• As in WWI, US participation is decisive - industrial capacity crucial in this “gross national product” war

The Home Front

• Federally-directed mobilization

• Wartime manufacturing marvels:

• 1000s of aircraft, 100,000 armored vehicles, 2.5 million trucks

• synthetic rubber, radar, jet engines, early computers

The Home Front• The rise of the West

Coast:

• CA gets 10% of all federal spending

• 2 million people to CA for defense jobs

• Labor in war - union recognition required, but no-strike pledge

Fighting for Freedom at Home

Key Themes• WWII created opportunities for

disadvantaged and oppressed groups to demand rights in the U.S.

• The major exception to this was Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans, who were placed in internment camps during the war.

• Unlike WWI, WWII moved us toward a more inclusive society - partly because Hitler’s racism was linked to such clear evil.

First, the exception:Japanese and Japanese Americans during

WWII

• What stood out most to you in the video?

• What was the message the video was trying to communicate? (Evidence?)

• Who do you think the video’s target audience was? (Evidence?)

• Did you find the message convincing? Why or why not? (Evidence?)

Watch the 9-minute propaganda film that follows, and as you watch, think:

• What stands out most to you in these images?

• Who do you think made them, and why?

• What are the messages they communicate to you? (Evidence?)

• How do these images compare/contrast with the view presented in the video? What do they make you think about Japanese internment?

Check out the images on the next two slides, and think:

Title: Pfc. Thomas Higa, 27-year-old Japanese American war veteran and smallest member of the 100th Battalion, who is in Denver to tell other Japanese Americans about the wonderful treatment the United States Army gives its soldiers. Higa was wounded at the battle of Cassino in the Italian campaign. He is but 5' 1-1/2 and declares this to be a decided advantage because he makes a smaller target to the enemy. Higa was inducted into the Unites States Army in June, 1941, and was stationed at Schofield Barracks, Honolulu, on the day Pearl Harbor was attacked. From Honolulu, he was sent to Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, thence to Camp Shelby, Mississippi. He went overseas in August, 1943, landed at Oran, Algeria, and going directly to Salerno. He hopes to return to the fighting front and doesn't care where it may be so long as he is fighting the enemy of freedom loving people. -- Photographer: Iwasaki, Hikaru -- Denver, Colorado. 6/24/44 Contributing Institution: UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library

http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/themed_collections/subtopic5f.html

Text

Senninbari (Thousand Stitches)by Henry Sugimoto

ca. 1942

Japanese Internment

• 1/3 of Japanese in US were first-generation (issei) but majority were American-born citizens (nisei)

• More than 110,000 relocated

• Lived with quasi-military discipline in camps

Women and War

Marilyn Monroe in YankSaturday Evening Post

Women and War

• 1944: 1/3 of civilian labor force

• 350,000 served in auxiliary military units: Navy WAVES and Army WAC

• 1/3 of West Coast aircraft and shipbuilding workers

• temporary gains

Patriotic Assimilation

• WWII as a melting pot, especially for European immigrants

• Races and Racism (1942) - racism as “a travesty of scientific knowledge”

• Still, discrimination against Jews at home

Mexicans: The Bracero Program

Photos of Braceros by Leonard Nadel, 1956 Courtesy Smithsonian Magazine: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/multimedia/photos/59660532.html?

c=y&page=6

Mexican Americans• Mexican Americans:

• defense industry jobs

• military service alongside whites

• spurs integration

• But: “Zoot Suit” Riots (1943)

• Social protest re: wage discrimination

Zoot Suit Riots

Indians during the War

Image: http://www.navajocodetalkers.org/photos/

Corporal Henry Bake, Jr. (left) of Ft. Defiance, Arizona and Pfc. George Kirk (right) of Leupp, Arizona operate a portable radio unit on the front line in the jungles of Bougainville, in the Solomon Islands

• Navajo “code-talkers”

• Iroquois declaration of war against Axis Powers

• 25,000 serve in army

• tens of thousands to jobs in war industries

African Americans and the War

• War provoked changes in status of blacks in the US

• Nazi Germany cited US racism as proof of its race policies

• More than 1 million blacks served in segregated units of the armed forces

• A. Philip Randolph calls for March on Washington, July 1941

• Why? 300 black aircraft workers out of 100,000 in 1940

• Demands: access to defense employment; end to segregation; national antilynching law

• FDR: executive order banning defense discrimination; Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC)

• 1944: 1 million black defense workers

Birth of the Civil Rights Movement

A. Philip Randolph

WWII and Black Civil Rights

• The Double-V - victory abroad and at home

• Slow improvement: NAACP and American Jewish Congress; CIO unions; all-white primaries banned

• Gunnar Myrdal - An American Dilemma

Conclusions

• Progress in battles for equality during WWII because:

• Demands of wartime economy (women AND ethnic/racial minorities)

• International climate: anti-Hitler = anti-racist

• After the war: discrimination does not end, but more ideological/political support for racial equality

• After the war: women back home; Japanese economic losses