Standard 11.7 ReviewWorld War II

FOREIGN POLICY

Japan Invades China, 1937

• President Roosevelt gave a speech to quarantine aggressive nations and stop the spread of war

• U.S. placed oil and steel embargo on Japan

• U.S. sent arms and supplies to China

• U.S. began to shift from neutrality

• Highlighted FDR’s belief in collective security, stressing need for allies

• Paved way for FDR to increase military in preparation for war

Atlantic Charter

• Secret meeting with Prime Minister Winston Churchill– Shared opposition to Hitler

• Formally established common goals and a desire for collective security between the U.S. and Great Britain

Aid

Lend-Lease Plan• Effort to help Allies without

joining the war• Designed to give arms and

materials to any country whose defense was essential to the U.S.

• FDR traded old destroyers for rights to lease military bases around the world

Cash-and-Carry Policy, 1939• Designed to sell arms to

friendly European nations for cash as a means of direct support without involving the U.S. in open conflict.

• Required cash up front• Required countries

receiving supplies use their own transport ships

Aid

• Lend-Lease Act led to a reduction in U.S. isolationism

• U.S. increased aid to British after Japan, Germany, and Italy made the Tripartite Pact

Four Freedoms Speech

Freedom of…• Speech and Expression• Worship• From Want• From Fear

• Willingness of the U.S. government to commit material goods to the cause of throwing back Germany and Japan

Dictated Goals by…• Clearly stating that U.S.

should help Allies defeat the Axis powers

• Laying out terms for what FDR expected to happen after the war

• Enumerating 4 freedoms that should prevent any country from waging an unjust war.

Signal to the rest of the world…

• Main Premise:– Focused on opposing Japan’s effort to take East

Asia an set the stage for the coming conflict in WWII

Congress

1930s• Passed a series of neutrality

acts to prevent U.S. involvement in situations which might lead to future wars

1940• FDR encouraged Congress

to increase national defense spending

• Dramatically increased spending and instituted first peacetime military draftNeutrality Act of 1935

Made it unlawful to export arms, ammunition, or tools of war to any port of a nation at war.

U.S. Navy Destroyer Greer

• Unprovoked attack by a German U-boat• Undeclared shooting war with Germany prior

to the formal involvement of the U.S. in WWII

U.S. Declares War on Japan• Geral Tojo was elected prime minister of Japan

• General Hideki Tojo (centre) proposes a toast with the German and Italian Ambassadors to Japan and officers from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The occasion was the signing of the tripartite pact, a defense agreement between Japan, Germany and Italy.

PEARL HARBOR

Japan Attacks

• Justified Surprise Attack due to– Seeing U.S. as a serious threat to its long term plans for

Asia– Wanting to remove U.S. ability to put military in the Pacific– U.S. economic embargo, so saw no reason not to take what

it needed from Asia

MAJOR DEVELOPMENTS

Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD)

• Advances in sonar and radar technologies• Use of penicillin to assist wounded soldiers• Development of the atomic bomb (most

significant single weapon developed)

War Production Board (WPB)

• Regulated the production and allocation of goods and raw materials for war

• Introduced rationing: to provide more resources for the military

Germany

• Blitzkrieg: military strategy of using surprise to quickly crush opposition

• V-1 and V-2 rockets were significant weapon developments (first guided missiles ever developed and used)– Didn’t risk lives of German bomber pilots

Major Development

• Development of the jet engine– Aircraft powered by jet engines

• Development of the atomic bomb• First successful mass-use of armored vehicles

WAR STRATEGY

Invasion of Normandy

Why• Allies needed safe harbors

to offload men and equipment in Europe and push the attack

• Norman beach defenses were weak

• Beaches gave easy access to French interior

• Germans would have a hard time getting reinforcements

Importance• FDR needed to keep Russia

from falling to the Germans• Stalin needed another front

to siphon German troops from Russian attack

• Churchill needed to prevent German invasion by sea

Significance of Normandy Invasion

• Largest coordinated amphibious assault in history

• Largest multinational force assembled to date

Battle of the Bulge

• Last great German offensive and slowed Allied invasion of Germany

• Strategic Allied mistake was Allied commanders believed attack would be focused elsewhere

• Ultimately helped Allied strategy toward the end of the war– Depleted Germany’s military equipment– Depleted Germany’s best remaining troops– Depleted Germany’s resources, like oil and fuel

Battles in the Pacific

Battle of the Coral Sea• Prevented Japan’s capture

of islands there and possibly Hawaii

Battle of Midway• Unique due to

– Surface ships never saw each other

– Battle was carried out by aircraft only on both sides

Battle of Midway

Significance• Japan was forced to

abandon several strategic islands

• Japan was forced to use lower quality equipment and pilots

• After battle, U.S. gained naval superiority

Why U.S. Victory• Battle stopped further

Japanese expansion in the Pacific

• U.S. losses were extremely low compared to Japan

• U.S. was able to keep strategic island of Midway and its heavy airfield

Iwo Jima

• Important to U.S. and Allied airpower in the Pacific– It had airstrips the Allies

could use to bomb mainland Japan

• Marines objective was to take the 3 airfields and Mt. Suribachi so the U.S. could move on to further attack Japan’s holdings in the Pacific

• U.S. Strategy to protect U.S. Navy and diminish Japan’s ability to fight in the Pacific

• Allowed U.S. to establish large airbases to escort planes and ships in the area

• Removed Japan’s ability to use airfields to launch kamikaze attacks– Forced them to use islands

that were further away

Bataan Death March• Largest surrender of American

troops during WWII• Began on April 10, 1942, when

the Japanese assembled about 78,000 prisoners (12,000 U.S. and 66,000 Filipino).

• They walked 65 miles over the course of about six days until they reached San Fernando.

There, groups as large as 115 men were forced into boxcars designed to hold only 30-40 men. Boxcars were so full that the POWs could not sit down. This caused more to die of heat exhaustion and suffocation in the cars on the ride from San Fernando to Capas. The POWs then walked 7 more miles to Camp O'Donnell. At the entrance to the camp, the POWs were told to lay out the few possessions they still had; any POW found with any Japanese-made items or money was executed on the spot.

WOMEN IN THE MILITARY

Rosie the Riveter• A symbolic

figure for women industrial workers during the war.

Women’s Roles

• Women, regardless of marital status began to take jobs in previously male-dominated roles and industries

WAAC

• Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps

• Pushed forward by Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall

SOLDIERS

Audie Murphy

• Most decorated soldier in the war

• Earned 11 medals, including the Medal of Honor

• Became a movie star

Black Soldiers

92nd Infantry Division• The nickname 'Buffalo Soldier' dates

back to the late 1860s, when black soldiers volunteered for duty in the American West. The American Indians, who regarded the new threat as 'black white men,' coined the term 'Buffalo Soldier' out of respect for a worthy enemy. According to one story, the Indians thought that the black soldiers, with their dark skin and curly hair, resembled buffaloes. Another story attributes the name to the buffalo hides that many black soldiers wore during the harsh winters out West, as a supplement to their inadequate government uniforms.

99th Pursuit Squadron• Tuskegee Airmen• First all-black combat air

squadron in the Army Air Corps

• Among the most decorated air units in WWII

• Showed exceptional skill and bravery and were respected legends in their own time

100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry Regiment

• Most highly decorated unit for their size

• Japanese Americans• Purple Heart

Battalion– Known for high

number of casualties

• Known for rescue of the lost Battalion at Biffontaine– Weren’t really lost,

just surrounded by Germans and cut off

– lost 800 men in five days of battle to rescue 211

Other Ethnic Groups

Navajo Indians• Became code-talkers• Commanders in the Pacific

used their language for an “unbreakable code”

• Language only spoken in U.S. (small group)

• Very little written language

Company E of the 141st Regiment, 36th Division

• All-Hispanic, highly decorated American infantry unit

Pacific Leaders

Lt. Colonel James Doolittle• Famous for the first air

bombardment of Japan after Pearl Harbor

Douglas MacArthur• Allied Commander that took

most amount of land in the Pacific with the least amount of U.S. military lives lost

CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES

Japanese-Americans

• U.S. Government did not trust their loyalty in the Pacific, so sent to Europe to fight

• Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps following Pearl Harbor

• Fred Korematsu v. United States of America– Centered on internment

of Japanese Americans during WWII

Reaction to “Final Solution”

• Americans created the War Refugee Board in 1944, which helped 200,000 Jews come to the U.S.

Bracero Program

• Federal guest-worker project that ran between 1942 and 1964

• Allowed Mexicans to work temporarily in the U.S. due to increased demand for farm labor

• In 1956, braceros were fumigated with DDT as part of the entry process into the U.S.

Discrimination

African Americans• Against factory workers

triggered a call for a protest march on Washington D.C. by A. Phillip Randolph

• Mass immigration of southern blacks to north caused occasional race riots

• Pushed forward black Civil Rights Movement

Latin Americans• Tensions in L.A. boiled over

between white sailors and Mexican American youths

ATOMIC BOMBS

War Effort

• U.S. Government provided funds for a top-secret scientific research program to build an atomic bomb

• Manhattan Project– Scientists wanted test

bomb first– Arguments Against Test:

• Japanese might shoot down delivery plane

• Test might fail• Japanese might move U.S.

POWs to test island

Decision to Use Atomic Bombs

• Harry S. Truman made the decision

• Attempt to force unconditional surrender of Japan

• To prevent surface invasion of Japan by U.S. (body bags)

• General Eisenhower was opposed

Effects of Bombs

Hiroshima• 5 square miles of city was

destroyed• 140,000 inhabitants were

killed by the end of 1945

Other Effects• Japan agreed to surrender• Establish U.S. as the first

Super Power• Global conventional warfare

decreased until 1960

AID AND THE ECONOMY

Truman Doctrine

• Marshall Plan was part of this• Gave $13 billion in U.S. loans and investment• Sponsorship reasons

– Europe was market for U.S. goods before the war– Western Europe might have become Communist– West Germany needed to be restored– Would allow Europe to repay lend-lease and other

debts

Marshall Plan

• Implemented in Western Europe to set up democratic governments in the region

• U.S. bolstered its economy by increasing trade with Europe

• Aid given to Greece and Turkey• Unintended Effect: Soviets saw as a threat and

refused to participate• Long term impact: eliminated spread of

Communism into Western Europe