WWII - VietnamA Sprint

Instigators of WWII• Fascinating Fascism (The state is MORE

important than the individual.)

• Fascists hated COMMUNISM.

• Led by aggressive DICTATORS.

• Mussolini in Italy (promised to return Italy to the glory days of the old Roman Empire.)

• Stalin in Russia (rapid INDUSTRIALIZATION and massive wage cuts + seized family-own farms, turning them into “collectives” or state-controlled properties)

Instigators of WWII (cont)• Hitler in Germany

(Nazi Party, wanted to ignore the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and EXPAND the German territories.) + anti-Semitic, Holocaust.

• Hirohito in Japan (Tried to expand its territories by INVADING Manchuria (China).

Trying to Avoid War• APPEASEMENT (Letting Hitler get

away with some things that went against the Treaty of Versailles, hoping he would get his fill, and eventually stop invading the territories of other peoples. E.g. the annexation of Austria and growing the German military.)

• Appeasement did not work, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia in March of 1939,and Poland later that September.

• Seeing that there was no end to Hitler’s plans to dominate EUROPE, France and Britain declared war on Germany two days after the invasion of Poland.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact• To avoid having to wage war

on two fronts, Hitler allied Germany with Russia, which was ironic to the whole world, because FASCISTS hated communism.

• The deal called for the division of POLAND between The Soviet Union and Germany.

• This would fall apart when, in 1941, Hitler invaded Russia anyway.

Early Nazi Victories

• France falls to the Germans within a month’s time.

• Nazis wage BLITZKRIEG warfare on the British people. (Long-range bombs that rained down on the city indiscriminately.)*TOTAL WAR

The “Axis” Forms• Hitler and Mussolini

pledged to cooperate with one another on international issues.

• JAPAN, seeing the obvious need for allies in an increasingly tumultuous world, aligned itself with Hitler and Mussolini, forming what came to be known as the Axis Powers.

U.S. and the War in Europe

• Neutrality was favored by the AMERICAN people, but President, FDR, saw the need to help Britain and France fight off the Nazis.

• The Neutrality Act of 1939, allowed the US to sell arms to the Allies on a “cash and carry” basis.

• December, 1940: Britain had ran out of money to fight the war; the US adopts the Lend-Lease Act to help any country that was “vital to the defense of the United States.”

The US is Drawn into the War

• Japan had DEPENDED ON raw materials bought from the US to expand its territories via military aggression.

• In July of 1940, Congress gave the president the power to restrict the sale of STRATEGIC MATERIALS (materials that could help Japan wage a war.)

• The Japanese retaliated by attacking the American naval fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7th, 1941.

• The US declares war on Japan the following day, opening up a new front in the Pacific; Hitler declares war on the US because they are ALLIED with Japan.

• US agrees to ally with Russia under the premise of “mutual self interest.”

North Africa• German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel

led the Axis forces in North Africa. • His success in desert warfare had

already earned him the nickname "Desert Fox."

• In November 1942, however, the British beat Rommel at the battle of El Alamein in Egypt.

• The victory gave a boost to Allied morale.

• It also stopped the Germans from taking the Suez Canal, a key supply route. *Colonies supplied materials.

• Still, Rommel's forces remained a threat in North Africa.

• Soon after El Alamein, U.S. and British forces under the command of U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower landed in Morocco and Algeria, in the western part of North Africa.

• This force moved east while British forces moved west from Egypt.

• They closed in on Rommel and, in May 1943, drove the Germans out of North Africa.

Operation Barbarossa, Stalingrad

• After invading the Soviet Union in June 1941, German troops advanced on Leningrad.

• This major city was a military center and a symbol of the Soviet state.

• The citizens of Leningrad joined Red Army troops in defending the city.

• The Germans then began a siege of Leningrad it lasted nearly 900 days.

• As food ran out, hundreds of thousands of people died. • Still the Soviets refused to surrender. • In early 1944, Soviet troops finally broke the siege.• German forces also attacked other Soviet cities. In 1941 they

approached the capital city, Moscow.• Heavy losses and wintry weather slowed the Germans. • They finally reached Moscow before a Soviet counterattack forced

them to retreat. • 1942, the Germans targeted the industrial city of Stalingrad.• After the Germans had taken most of the city, the Soviets struck

back. • They surrounded the city and cut off German supply lines. • Cold and starving, the few surviving Germans finally surrendered in

February 1943.• The German defeat at Stalingrad was devastating. • It marked a major turning point in the war. From that point on, the

Soviets were on the attack. German forces were in full retreat.

The Allies Attack Italy and Germany

• After victory in North Africa, the Allies moved into southern Europe. • They took the island of Sicily and landed on Italy's mainland in September

1943. • Once more, Eisenhower organized and directed the invasion. U.S.

General George Patton and British General Bernard Montgomery led the troops.

• As the Allies advanced, the Italians forced dictator Benito Mussolini from power.

• Italy's new government then surrendered to the Allies.• However, German forces in Italy fought on. Finally, in June 1944, the Allies

took Rome, Italy's capital.• Meanwhile, the Allies launched air attacks on Germany. • Day and night, bombs battered factories and cities and killed thousands.

*Memphis Belle• Still Germany fought on.

• Women replaced men in essential WARTIME INDUSTRIES.

• Rosie the Riveter used to RECRUIT women into these industries.

• Economic opportunities for women are EXPANDED.

• Rationing to save precious materials/resources for the war. *posters*

• War bonds sold to help pay for the war.

• "The women worked in pairs. I was the riveter and this big, strong, white girl from a cotton farm in Arkansas worked as the bucker. The riveter used a gun to shoot rivets through the metal and fasten it together. The bucker used a bucking bar on the other side of the metal to smooth out the rivets. Bucking was harder than shooting rivets; it required more muscle. Riveting required more skill."

Women & The Homefront in WWII

African-Americans in WW2

• The war also changed attitudes about minority groups. • About 1 million African Americans served in World War II. At first, most received low-level

assignments and served only in segregated units. • In 1942, however, the army began training whites and African Americans together. • African Americans began to fill combat assignments in 1944.• African Americans made key contributions in combat - trained at the Tuskegee Army Air

Field—the Tuskegee Airmen—destroyed more than 250 enemy planes.* Show Redtails Clip here• One unit's commander, Benjamin Davis, Jr., later became the first African American general in the

Air Force. • His father, Benjamin Davis, Sr., was the first African American general in the army.• No Jim Crow in Europe • Outside of the military, African Americans also sought change. • In 1941, labor leader A. Philip Randolph demanded that the government outlaw job

discrimination in American defense industries.• In response, President Roosevelt signed an executive order creating the Fair Employment

Practices Committee. • The order states, "There shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense

industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin."

Tuskegee Airmen

Native Americans in WW2

• Thousands of Native Americans worked in defense industries or served in the armed forces.

• Ira Hayes of the Pima tribe became a hero in the battle for Iwo Jima in the Pacific - Show Flags of Our Fathers Clip Here*

• A special group of Navajo formed a unit called the "code talkers."

• Used a code based on the Navajo language to send vital military messages about troop movement and battle plans.

• The Japanese never broke this code.

Ira Hayes

Latinos in WW2• Hundreds of thousands of Latinos served in the United States military. • In fact, 13 Mexican Americans won the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest

military medal. • Mercedes Cubría of Cuba became the first Latina woman officer in the

Women's Army Corps. • Horacio Rivero of Puerto Rico became the first Latino four-star admiral to

serve in the United States Navy since Civil War hero David Farragut.• Latinos also contributed at home. • Prompted by the wartime need for labor, U.S. labor agents recruited

thousands of farm and railroad workers from Mexico. • This effort, called the Bracero (brah • SEHR • oh) Program, encouraged

emigration from Mexico.• Like African Americans, Mexican Americans suffered from discrimination.• In spite of their contributions, they were not welcomed in some cities.

Latino Airmen and Mercedes Cubría

Japanese-Americans in WW2

• As the war progressed, second-generation Japanese Americans served in the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat team.

• Together, these units became the most decorated in the history of the U.S. military.

Korematsu Vs. U.S. • Japanese Americans won glory on the battlefield, but they faced trouble at

home. S• ome military and political leaders worried what Japanese Americans would

do if Japan invaded the United States.• As a result, President Roosevelt ordered the relocation of more than

100,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast.• The army forced them to move to internment camps , which were crowded

and uncomfortable.*Show clips from Ken Burns here*• Most Japanese Americans were forced to stay in the camps for three years.

Some lost businesses and homes.• Some Americans disagreed with the internment. • The Supreme Court, however, upheld the order in a 1944 case, Korematsu v.

United States.• Only in 1988 did the United States acknowledged the injustice. • Congress issued an apology and gave each survivor $20,000 as a token of

the nation's regret.

Fighting in the Pacific

• “Island Hopping” to secure each island in the Pacific from Japanese control for STRATEGIC REASONS.

• General MacArthur, devastated at having to leave troops behind in the Phillipines

• The Bataan Death March (horrible POW camps in the Philippines, American soldiers beaten, tortured, starved, and died of diseases.)

• Midway - Add details

• Kamikaze raids.

D-Day Invasion• June 6th, 7000 ships and

100,000 soldiers head for the Normandy coast.

• 23,000 paratroopers are dropped onto the continent - Operation Market Garden Show Band of Brothers

• D-Day was ultimately successful, but the Allies were not IN THE CLEAR; they still needed to assail the Nazis, who were in full retreat, hoping to regroup in the east. Show Saving Private Ryan

• Two fronts; a challenge to the US (fighting in both the Pacific and in Europe.)

The War Ends• The Battle of the BULGE: Hitler makes

one last effort to cut off Allied supplies coming though a Belgian port. The Allies beat the Nazis back and Germany has no choice but to surrender in May of 1945.)

• Manhattan Project: Oppenheimer’s A-bomb; dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In August of 1945, Japan SURRENDERS.

• For the test, the personal diplomacy of FDR during the war, strengthened the President’s role in shaping US foreign policy.

The Holocaust• As the Allies freed

German-held areas, they discovered the full extent of Nazi cruelty.

• During the war, the Nazis had developed what they called the "final solution - genocide (wiping out an entire group of people).

• About two-thirds of Europe's Jews—6 million people—were murdered in the Holocaust.

• Millions of others—Slavs, Roma (Gypsies), communists, homosexuals, and people with handicaps—were also killed, though Jews were the only group singled out for total extermination.

Persecution of Germany's Jews• Hitler gained power in 1933, the

Nazis persecuted Germany’s Jews. • First quickly deprived Jews of

many rights that all Germans had long taken for granted.

• September 1935, the Nuremberg laws removed citizenship from Jewish Germans and banned marriage between Jews and other Germans.

• Other laws kept Jews from voting, holding public office, and employing non-Jewish Germans.

• Later, Jews were banned from owning businesses and practicing law and medicine.

• With no source of income, life became difficult for Jews in Germany.

The Persecution Worsens and Spreads

• By the end of the decade, Nazi actions against the Jews became more violent.

• On the night of November 9, 1938, the Nazis burned Jewish places of worship, destroyed Jewish shops, and killed many Jews. (Kristallnacht)

• About 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps , large prison camps used to hold people for political reasons.

• During World War II, the Nazis terrorized and abused Jews in each of the lands they conquered.

• They forced Jews to identify themselves by wearing a yellow, six-pointed star on their clothing.

• The mass killing of Jews began when the German army invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.

• Special Nazi forces carried out these murders.

• They rounded up thousands of Jews, shooting them and throwing them into mass graves. *Ordinary Men

Katyn

Primary Source Alert!• Josef Perl, who survived a massacre of Czech Jews, wrote of the act described

on the last slide:

"We marched into a forest where a huge long ditch was already dug. . . . I could hear . . . a machine gun going. . . . All of a sudden, . . . I saw my mother and four sisters lined up and before I had a chance to say, 'Mother!' they were already dead. Somehow time stands still. . . . But what woke me was the sight of my five nieces and nephews being marched, and the murderers had the audacity to ask them to hold hands. . . . I would have been almost the next one but all of a sudden the bombers came over, we were ordered to lay face downwards, but everyone started running. . . . and I . . . ran deep into the forest."

• Anne Frank: “I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.”Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/annefrank752397.html

• Anne Frank-inspired lesson: C. Ask the students to do an unusual act of kindness once a week. Each student should write down on a large note card what they did, how they felt and what reaction people they helped had. Do not have students put their names on the cards. Place the note cards on a bulletin board and after several months collect the cards and randomly give them to members of the class. Have each person in the class pick out one card they find particularly important or interesting and discuss it with classmates. Are there any patterns emerging? What is pro-social behavior? Can it be learned or is it innate? Are people "getting used" to doing acts of kindness for others? Does the group feel it has changed because of the actions it has taken? Does the group/individuals want to continue doing acts of kindness?

The Final Solution• Nazi troops crammed thousands more into

railroad cars like cattle, depositing them in concentration camps, such as Buchenwald in Germany.

• Guards took the prisoners' belongings, shaved their heads, and tattooed camp numbers on their arms.

• Prisoners often had only a crust of bread or watery soup to eat. Hundreds of thousands became sick and died.

• In January 1942, the Nazis agreed on what they called the "final solution" to destroy the Jews.

• They built death camps, such as those at Auschwitz and Treblinka in Poland.

• At these camps, many people died in poison gas chambers.

• Others died of starvation. • Still others were victims of cruel experiments

carried out by Nazi doctors. • Of the estimated 1.6 million people who died

at Auschwitz, about 1.3 million were Jews.• Nazi Medicine

The Death Camps• Upon arrival at a death camp, healthy prisoners were chosen for slave labor. • The elderly, disabled, sick, and mothers and children were sent to poison gas chambers, after

which their bodies were burned in giant furnaces.• Although information about the unfolding Holocaust had reached western leaders well before

1945, Allied forces moving through Germany and Poland after V-E Day saw the unspeakable horrors of the camps firsthand. British soldier Peter Coombs described the survivors in a camp:

"One has to see their emaciated faces, their slow staggering gait and feeble movements. . . . they are dying and nothing can save them. Their end is inescapable. They are too far gone to live."

—from Crime Through Time

• People around the world were stunned by this terrible result of Nazi tyranny. • Allied governments, however, had evidence of the death camps as early as 1942. • Historians today debate why and how an event as horrifying as the Holocaust could have

occurred.• They also discuss why so relatively little was done to stop it.

In Remembrance• The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is

located near the National Mall in Washington, D.C. This memorial provides a national mark of respect for all victims of Nazi persecution.

• In 2004 the National World War II Memorial opened on a site on the National Mall.

• This memorial is dedicated to the 16 million who served in the military, the more than 400,000 who died, and the men and women who supported the war effort on the home front.

Identifying What groups did the Nazi government victimize?

Thinking Like a HISTORIAN

Drawing Inferences and Conclusions

The Nazis forced Jews to wear badges on their clothing. The word Jude is German for "Jew." Why do you think the Nazis would make Jews identify themselves in this way? For more about drawing inferences and conclusions, review Thinking Like a Historian.

Roosevelt Dies (April 1945), Truman Becomes President.

• “Fair Deal” – to keep expanding reforms begun during FDR’s presidency.

• Made the decision to drop the A-bomb on Japan to end the war without the COST of more American lives.

• Desegregated US Armed Forces.

• Truman Doctrine: CONTAIN COMMUNISM by giving aid to Greece and Turkey (against Russian aggression.

Impact of WWII on America

• The GI Bill

• The legacy of the A-bomb

• The desegregation of the army

• The US joined the United Nations which replaced the League of Nations.

• Changing ideas on the issue of humanitarian aid b/c of the Holocaust and the Nuremberg Trials. + Eleanor Roosevelt created the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

• The Marshall Plan to help Europe recover from the devastation of the war.

1950s/Post WWII Era• Baby Boom:

population burst caused by the delay in marriages during WWII – also increases the American need for EDUCATIONAL resources.

• Suburbia

• US economic ADVANTAGE over the world (war not fought on American soil.)

• Interstate Highway Act of 1956 – increased suburban growth.

Cold War Begins• Why “Cold War”?

• After WWII, the US and Russia were no longer ALLIES because they did not share the same economic and political values.

• The Soviet Union never left the countries of Eastern Europe after WWII.

• Iron Curtain (nickname given to the boundary of Soviet domination in Europe during THE COLD WAR.

The Iron Curtain

MAD & Alliances• Mutually Assured Destruction

• NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) - formed in 1949 to protect Western Europe from the Soviet Union: collective security against Communist aggression.

• The aforementioned Marshall Plan was also INTENDED to keep Western Europe from falling victim to the spread of communism.

Cold War Events/Themes

• Sputnik – Soviets launched first satellite. Americans FEAR THAT the Soviets have achieved technological superiority.

• Eisenhower Doctrine: EXPANDED the principles of the Truman Doctrine by extending to the Middle East, military ASSISTANCE order to offset communist influence in the region.

• Berlin Airlift: Soviet forces had cut off Berlin from the WESTERN WORLD, causing the US to airlift supplies to West Berlin.

• Fall of the Berlin wall in 1989; most commonly associated with the Cold War.

McCarthy Era• Senator Joseph McCarthy:

Led a “witch hunt” for Communist spies in the US government during the early 1950s.

• McCarthyism: Fear of communist influence in the US.

• Senate hearings led by McCarthy in the 1950s were arguably unconstitutional.

• Execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg REFLECTS Cold War concerns about espionage (spying) by communists in the US.

Korean War, 1950-1953• The CIVIL WAR

between Communists in North Korea (supported by China and the Soviet Union) and South Korea (supported by the US and the UN.)

• US intervened in the war b/c of the policy of CONTAINMENT.

• Presidential wartime powers expanded.

• Neither side one, N and S Korea remained split.

Vietnam War• Civil War between North and

South Vietnam over Communism.

• Domino Theory: that if one country falls to Communism, OTHERS AROUND IT WILL FALL AS WELL. Used to justify the Vietnam War.

• Different that WWII, because the amount of public protesting. (Berkeley demonstrations, riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and the Kent State protests all reflect this.)

Vietnam War (Cont)• 26th Amendment giving

18-year-olds the right to vote.

• Presidential wartime powers expanded during the Vietnam Era, but LIMITED thereafter.

• US pulled out of the war in 1975, resulting in a North Vietnamese victory, & South Vietnam falling to Communism.

• Returning soldiers treated very poorly.(First televised war.)

Effects of Vietnam• The War Powers Act of 1973:

limited the president’s ability to send troops into COMBAT abroad.

• US questions its role as police officer of the world.

• Created reluctance TO COMMIT U.S. troops for extended military action abroad.

• Showed that foreign policy can be altered by public opinion.

• Led to greater public distrust of governmental policies.

• US experience in the war showed that SUPERIOR MILITARY technology does not necessarily guarantee a victory.