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Chapter 24: World War II (1933–1945)
Important Keywords
Isolationism: American foreign policy of the 1920s and 1930s based on the belief that it was in the best interest of the United States not to become involved in foreign conflicts that did not directly threaten American interests.
Yalta Conference: Meeting held at Yalta in the Soviet Union between President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Josef Stalin in February 1945; at this meeting critical decisions on the future of postwar Europe were made. At Yalta it was agreed that Germany would be divided into four zones, that free elections would take place after the war in Eastern Europe, and that the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan.
Bataan Death March: After the Japanese landed in the Philippines in May 1942, nearly 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners were forced to endure a 60-mile march; during this ordeal, 10,000 prisoners died or were killed.
Manhattan Project: Secret project to build an atomic bomb that began in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in August 1942; the first successful test of a bomb took place on July 16, 1945.
Rosie the Riveter: Figure that symbolized American working women during World War II. After the war, women were expected to return to more traditional roles.
Double V campaign: Campaign popularized by American black leaders during World War II emphasizing the need for a double victory: over Germany and Japan and also over racial prejudice in the United States. Many blacks who fought in World War II were disappointed that the America they returned to still harbored racial hatreds.
Internment camps: Mandatory resettlement camps for Japanese Americans from America’s West Coast, created in February 1942 during World War II by executive order of President Franklin Roosevelt. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled that the camps were legal.
Key Timeline
1933: Hitler comes to power in Germany
1935: Neutrality Act
1938: Hitler annexes Austria and Sudetenland
1939: Nazi-Soviet Pact
Germany invades Poland
Beginning of World War II
1940: Roosevelt reelected for third term
American Selective Service plan instituted
1941: Lend-Lease assistance begins for England
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
United States officially enters World War II
Germany declares war on United States
1942: American troops engage in combat in Africa
Japanese interment camps opened
Battle of Coral Sea, Battle of Midway
Casablanca released
1943: Allied armies invade Sicily
United Mine Workers strike
1944: D-Day Invasion
Roosevelt defeats Thomas Dewey, elected for fourth term
Beginning of Battle of the Bulge
1945: Yalta Conference
Concentration camps discovered by Allied forces
FDR dies in Warm Springs, Georgia; Harry Truman becomes president
Germany surrenders unconditionally
Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Japan surrenders unconditionally
American Isolationism in the 1930s
In the 1930s, most Americans thought the US government should fight the Great Depression.
This decade had the most isolationist support.
As Japan, Italy, and Germany gained prominence, the American people were wary of another Great War.
American involvement in World War I was seen as a blunder by many.
Democracy wasn't secure yet. The conflict's outcomes didn't justify its death toll.
The 1917 American declaration of war was explained by conspiracy theories.
The common assumption that armaments makers and Wall Street bankers manipulated the US into war was probed by Senator Gerald Nye's committee.
The Nye Committee did much to publicize concerns that the Merchants of Death were behind American engagement in the conflict, but it never discovered evidence.
The Neutrality Act of 1935 was influenced by the Nye Committee.
American trading in arms and military supplies with warring states was prohibited by this statute.
Subsequent neutrality measures in 1936 and 1937 improved isolationist America's defenses against another World War I, but they were less effective against totalitarian threats.
War threatened the 1930s.
In 1937, Japan declared war on China after seizing Manchuria in 1931.
In 1935–36, Italy conquered Ethiopia.
After Adolf Hitler took power in 1933, Germany expanded its dominance throughout Europe.
President Roosevelt abandoned isolationism due to Nazi Germany's threat.
The Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939 allowed Germany to invade Poland on September 1.
Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany.
Roosevelt encouraged Congress to enact the Neutrality Act of 1939, which featured a "cash and carry" clause that allowed belligerent nations to obtain American weaponry provided they paid cash and took them in their own ships.
Because of their marine might, Roosevelt recognized this would benefit the British and French.
Congress granted Roosevelt's request in November.
Many Americans questioned isolationism after Germany's 1939 and 1940 wins.
Americans were startled when France fell after two months of combat in May and June 1940.
The Destroyers for Bases Agreement was signed by Roosevelt and Britain in September 1940.
Roosevelt traded 50 World War I-era American destroyers for leases on British sites in the Western Hemisphere.
The outposts helped the US defend the hemisphere, while the ships helped Britain combat German submarines.
Despite German aggressiveness, many Americans were isolationists.
They supported strengthening US defensive military might but opposed European war participation.
In 1940, 820,000 people joined the isolationist America First Committee.
The United States, the Middle East, and AntiSemitism
During the interwar period, the US seldom interacted with the Middle East.
Britain oversaw Iraq, Transjordan, and Palestine for the League of Nations, while France supervised Lebanon and Syria.
As the American vehicle industry developed in the 1920s, US oil corporations started turning to the Middle East for petroleum.
The Red Line Agreement, signed in 1928, allowed American, British, French, and Dutch oil corporations to export oil from the area.
Standard Oil of California was granted a license to export Saudi Arabian oil in 1933 by the monarch.
Saudi Arabia's vast oil reserves were discovered by Standard Oil researchers.
Oilmen were the only Americans interested in the Middle East.
Popular culture depicted the Middle East as a place for exciting experiences.
Devout American Christians saw Palestine as their religion's origin.
In the 1920s and 1930s, most Americans ignored Zionism and the Jewish connection to the Holy Land.
In the 1930s, European antiSemitism frightened US Jews.
Germany's Nazi administration promoted anti-Semitism after Hitler's rise to power. German Jews fled to Europe and the US due to rising persecution.
Unfortunately, few nations, including the US, were willing to shelter these refugees.
During the Great Depression, immigration was unpopular.
Politicians, editorial writers, and many residents agreed that immigration would increase competition for limited employment.
The National Origins Act of 1924 severely curtailed immigration.
German immigration was limited to 25,000 per year by legislation.
Immigrants also had to show they could sustain themselves in the US, which was difficult during the Great Depression.
This limited the number of German Jews admitted into the nation to less than 9,000 per year in the 1930s.
Jewish immigration was not eased despite widespread awareness of German antiSemitism and Nazi atrocities.
Unfortunately, anti-Semitism caused many Americans to resist Jewish immigration.
When Palestinian Arabs and Jewish settlers clashed, these expectations were destroyed.
In 1939, the British government released a White Paper that severely limited Jews into Palestine.
As war loomed in Europe, German Jews were stuck between Nazi cruelty and a world oblivious to their misery.
The Election of 1940 and the End of Isolationism
After the war, Franklin Roosevelt broke with George Washington's two-term limit.
Roosevelt announced his willingness to run for a third term at this time of world turmoil.
Despite his electoral failures since 1936, Roosevelt was handily selected by the Democratic party.
Although President Roosevelt was personally beloved, many Americans were worried by his campaigning for a third term.
The Republicans nominated Wendell Wilkie, a businessman and former Democrat, to capitalize on this feeling.
Wilkie performed better than Hoover and Landon in 1940, but he still lost to the incumbent president.
Roosevelt's political alliance survived.
As his third administration started, international concerns dominated Roosevelt's agenda.
He saw his reelection as a mandate to help authoritarian power opponents.
In early 1941, Roosevelt offered a proposal to help the British and their allies, who were running out of money to buy weapons and war supplies in the US.
Under the Lend-Lease Act, the US would lend military equipment to the British without payment until the war's conclusion.
After a heated argument between isolationists and president supporters, Congress enacted the law.
Great Britain received billions of dollars from Roosevelt.
In a 1940 address, he called the US the "arsenal of democracy."
By 1941, his dream was coming true.
In August 1941, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt met on warships near Newfoundland, deepening Anglo-American collaboration.
Both leaders expected the US would join the conflict.
To save democracy against authoritarianism, they decided to fight.
Churchill and Roosevelt's Atlantic Charter supported national self determination, free commerce, and territorial expansion via conquest.
In the Atlantic Charter, Churchill and Roosevelt called for a universal body to regulate belligerent states to replace the League of Nations.
Roosevelt decided to escort lend-lease ships to Iceland, enabling the British to concentrate their troops to defend them in the risky last leg to the British Isles.
By October 1941, Roosevelt's action put the US in an undeclared naval war with German submarines.
The Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor
In the 1930s, Japan wanted an economically self-sufficient empire.
In 1931, the Japanese invaded Manchuria, an easy target in civil war-torn China.
In 1937, the Japanese committed horrendous crimes in Nanking, killing hundreds.
In 1941, Japan seized French Indochina after Germany's European victories.
Despite its condemnation of Japanese aggression in China, the U.S. authorized American corporations to export Japan metals and oil essential to its war effort.
The Japanese takeover of French Indochina was the last straw for Roosevelt.
In July 1941, the president stopped selling oil to Japan, froze Japanese assets in the US, and barred Japanese ships from accessing the Panama Canal.
The U.S. action compelled the Japanese government to decide.
Before resuming commerce, the Americans asked that Japan end its Chinese conquests, the Japanese disapproved.
Japan's authorities decided to buy oil and other resources in British and Dutch possessions in Southeast Asia after diplomatic discussions stretched on from July to December.
This can only be done by crippling American military capability in the Pacific.
A surprise assault on Pearl Harbor to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet started.
Revisionist historians have contended that President Roosevelt knew about the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor but allowed it to happen to overcome opposition to American engagement in the war.
However, Naval intelligence deciphered some Japanese codes, but this incomplete data did not give a blueprint for the Pearl Harbor assault.
Some American authorities thought the Japanese were contemplating an attack against the Dutch or British.
On December 1941, Japanese aircraft carriers sneaked into Hawaii early.
On December 7, 180 Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor.
The Japanese inflicted massive damage on the Americans in a surprise attack.
Six vessels sank, and several more were severely damaged.
188 American aircraft were destroyed, most on the ground. 2,400 Americans died.
The Japanese failed to destroy Pearl Harbor's maintenance facilities and fuel storage because the American aircraft carriers were at sea, allowing the naval station to continue operations.
The following day, President Roosevelt requested a declaration of war against Japan, calling the assault "a day which will live in infamy."
The 1940 Tripartite Pact included Germany, Italy, and Japan (the Axis).
Germany and Italy mistakenly declared war on the US on December 11 to support their Axis ally.
Here the global war confronted the US.
The War Against Germany
In 1941, the US was more war-ready than in 1917.
Roosevelt's peacetime conscription to strengthen the military was approved by Congress in September 1940.
Conscription was effective after Pearl Harbor. Besides draftees, many volunteers served.
The "Government Issued" stamp on various military items gave American troops the moniker "GIs."
To accomplish wartime production targets, new agencies continued the economy's reform begun in 1940 by the Council for National Defense.
In early 1942, the General Maximum Price Regulation Act tried to freeze prices and limit fuel, meat, and sugar.
By raising tax rates and enlarging the federal income tax base, the Revenue Act of 1942 funded the war.
In Europe and the Pacific, the US fought.
American strategists focused on Europe because they thought Germany was more threatening than Japan.
First, the U.S. Navy helped the British defend convoys delivering essential supplies to Great Britain. German submarines sank Allied ships.
Between January and August 1942, German submarines sank nearly 500 ships.
The Allies won the Battle of the Atlantic using sonar and excellent anti submarine techniques.
In North Africa, American infantrymen first fought.
The US and UK invaded French North Africa in late 1942 to outflank General Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps, which threatened the Suez Canal in Egypt.
In May 1943, German and Italian troops in North Africa surrendered after a fierce battle.
The Americans and British conquered Sicily in July and August.
They arrived in Italy in September.
The Italian government surrendered, while German soldiers still opposed the Allies.
After Rome fell in June 1944, the Germans fought in northern Italy until May 1945.
In the early stages of World War II, the Soviet Union assisted Nazi Germany conquer Poland, Finland, and the Baltic republics.
In June 1941, Hitler invaded the USSR.
The German army was captivated by this freshly created Eastern Front.
The Soviets lost 20–30 million people.
Josef Stalin wanted a second front in Western Europe from the Americans and British due to German pressure on his soldiers.
In 1944, Stalin was promised an invasion by Roosevelt and Churchill.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower led the D-Day landings in France on June 6, 1944.
The landing was successful, but Germany was militarily unsustainable.
After a breakout offensive, almost 2 million Allied forces stormed over France.
Paris was freed in August.
Meanwhile, Soviet offensives pushed Hitler's weakened army into the German border.
In December 1944, the Germans launched one last desperate attempt to thwart the Allied advance in the West.
The German advance pushed the American line back, but General George S. Patton's counter attacks stopped them.
The Battle of the Bulge killed, injured, or captured almost 85,000 American soldiers.
By this point, the Allied strategic bombing campaign had destroyed the Luftwaffe and crippled German industry.
American, British, and Russian forces invaded Nazi detention camps and found horrible proof of Hitler's Final Solution for the "Jewish issue" as the German empire disintegrated.
Nazis killed 6 million Jews in the Holocaust between 1941 and 1945.
The U.S. government had opposed Jewish immigration before the war.
Roosevelt learnt about the execution camps in late 1943.
He and his military leaders decided not to destroy these facilities or the railways connecting to them because they believed the best way to aid the Jews was to win the war swiftly.
Angered by what they witnessed in the camps, American soldiers routinely shot captured SS guards.
After the war, American sympathy for European Jewry's horrors would bolster support for Israel.
On April 25, American forces confronted approaching Russians along the Elbe River.
In a brutal fight, the Soviets took Berlin.
Hitler committed suicide himself in his bunker on April 30 during the battle.
On May 8, the surviving German government surrendered, V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day).
Decisions concerning the postwar settlement were needed as the war in Europe neared its conclusion.
Roosevelt had been reelected to a fourth term but was in poor health. On April 12, 1945, he died.
The Allied commanders decided at Yalta to split Germany into four occupation zones administered by the Soviet Union, the US, Great Britain, and France.
The Soviet zone's Berlin would be divided similarly.
Stalin promised Poland and other Eastern European nations democratic elections.
After Germany was vanquished, Roosevelt convinced Stalin to wage war on Japan.
At Yalta, tensions predicted the cold war. Roosevelt's territorial concessions to Stalin in Eastern Europe, Mongolia, Manchuria, and Korea were afterwards criticized by ardent cold warriors.
Roosevelt thought he had to cooperate with the Soviet tyrant at the moment.
It was undeniable that Stalin's soldiers were in Eastern Europe.
Roosevelt and his officers believed Soviet forces would be required for the deadly Japanese home island warfare.
After the war, Roosevelt hoped to convince Stalin to temper his demands.
Churchill was more dubious of Soviet objectives.
He was working to restrict Soviet dominance in postwar Europe.
He spoke eloquently against Soviet aggression in his March 1946 "Iron Curtain" address.
The Middle East in World War II
The Middle East was strategically important to Allied military strategists during World War II.
The British and Americans wanted to prevent the Germans from taking the region's oil. This oil would power their battle effort.
In 1942, they feared that the Germans pushing over North Africa and the Japanese sailing into the Arabian Sea might meet in the Middle East.
Avoiding this nightmarish situation strengthened the Allies' regional authority.
The U.S. administration maintained strong ties with Saudi Arabia.
The Americans also persuaded Turkey to remain neutral, barring another German invasion into the Middle East.
Allied supremacy in the Mediterranean was strengthened by Anglo-American landings in North Africa.
Growing Allied stability in the area allowed the US to send Lend-Lease supplies to the Soviet Union via the Middle East.
The Americans established port facilities in Iran to gather war supplies and send them north by rail to the Soviets.
On the Eastern Front, American assistance helped defeat Germany.
The American presence in Iran was a military success, but Iranian workers resented American cultural insensitivity and appreciated American generosity.
The War Against Japan
After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese won for six months.
By March 1942, the Japanese had captured Hong Kong, Singapore, and Indonesia. The Americans resisted longer.
In December 1941, Japan attacked the Philippines.
General Douglas MacArthur led the defense until he was forced to flee and lead troops in Australia.
The Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor Island in Manila Bay were controlled by American and Filipino soldiers until April and May 6, 1942.
Malnutrition and sickness weakened the 75,000 American and Filipino soldiers that surrendered at Bataan.
These poor inmates were forced to march 60 miles on the Bataan Death March to a new incarceration camp by the Japanese.
Around 10,000 soldiers were killed or perished from sickness or overwork by their Japanese captors.
The tide turned against the Japanese two days after the Philippines' final fortress fell.
American aircraft carriers defeated a Japanese fleet transporting soldiers to attack Australia during the Battle of the Coral Sea.
This was the first significant naval action fought entirely by naval aviation.
The crucial Battle of Midway in early June 1942 included the American aircraft carriers.
A massive Japanese armada attacking Midway was intercepted by American carriers.
Four aircraft carriers and nearly 200 planes, the core of the Pearl Harbor assault, were lost by the Japanese.
Americans lost one carrier. The Pacific War turned on this fight.
The Japanese were on the defense after Midway.
Their tremendous losses could not be replaced.
The "arsenal of democracy" would soon expand the Pacific fleet beyond Pearl Harbor's losses.
In August 1942, US Marines invaded Guadalcanal.
After months of grueling jungle battle, the Japanese withdrew from the island in February of the following year.
The Japanese fought fanatically, frequently to the last man, and the Americans used their expanding technical and material edge to overrun them.
The Americans island-hopped in 1943, isolating and neutralizing vital Japanese sites with air and naval attacks and landed Marine and Army soldiers at crucial locations on the road to Japan.
American submarines were destroying significant numbers of Japanese merchantmen and tankers by late 1944, shutting Japan off from outside supplies, while the Air Force obtained bases from which its bombers could target Japanese towns.
In 1945, the US bombed urban Japan, destroying most of it.
The Japanese troops kept fighting despite the odds.
In late October 1944, General MacArthur returned to the Philippines to launch a liberation struggle that would endure until the war's conclusion.
In the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Japanese Navy lost most of its ships.
The desperate Japanese used kamikaze pilots to smash their aircraft onto American ships.
The Americans lost 25,000 at Iwo Jima in February to March 1945 and 50,000 in Okinawa in April to June.
The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb
Early 1945 conflicts escalated brutality, worrying American military strategists.
The Japanese military stockpiled soldiers, weaponry, and kamikaze aircraft for home island defense while the government refused to surrender.
Invading Japan would kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.
After Franklin Roosevelt died in April 1945, Harry Truman learned about the atomic bomb project.
In August 1942, Fears that Germany was developing an atomic bomb prompted the Manhattan Project.
The Los Alamos atomic bomb team was led by J. Robert Oppenheimer.
On July 16, 1945, the Alamogordo atomic bomb exploded.
The first use of atomic bombs on cities by the US has caused debate.
President Harry Truman chose to utilize this new technology easily.
He worried about American losses in a Japanese home island attack.
American conventional bombers were destroying Japanese cities.
Truman knew about Japanese atrocities like the Bataan Death March.
He shared American hatred for the Japanese, which led to harsh racial caricatures in popular culture.
A weapon that might end the conflict quickly was acceptable to the president.
On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima, home to many Japanese military offices, was bombed by the B-29 Enola Gay. The assault killed 75,000.
On August 9, a second bomb was launched on Nagasaki, killing nearly 40,000 people. The Japanese refused to surrender at first but then completely surrendered after losing.
The Soviet invasion of Manchuria the same day as the Nagasaki explosion influenced its decision.
American V-J Day (Victory Over Japan Day) was August 14, 1945.
On September 2, 1945, Japan officially surrendered.
The Home Front
Before Pearl Harbor, the US boosted its military industry.
Franklin Roosevelt made peace with big business once the New Deal ended.
Thousands of skilled businessmen worked in Washington to organize the war effort, earning the nickname "dollar-a-year men" because most were paid by their employers.
With millions of people in the military and companies producing military gear and other commodities, unemployment disappeared during the war.
The war boosted union membership.
The government's "no-strike" agreements were mostly honored by unions early in the war.
From 1943, Labor unrest and strikes increased, particularly in the coal industry.
The government raised taxes and broadened the tax base to pay for the war's massive costs. It also sold war bonds, a World War I practice.
Celebrities sold millions of dollars in bonds by appealing to the public.
Although better off than European civilians, average Americans sacrificed some luxuries during the war.
Gasoline, sugar, butter, and meat were rationed.
Ration cards limited families' purchases of these goods.
Recycling was common during the war.
Women who had worn silk stockings drew a line up the back of their legs to imitate prewar hosiery when some products were unavailable.
Life is altered in other ways.
City dwellers had to participate in "blackouts" by turning off outside lights and closing window shades.
This prevented ships from being silhouetted against bright city skylines, making them easy targets for predatory submarines and defending against hypothetical enemy air attacks.
Volunteers watched for and responded to bombings as observers and air raid wardens.
To allow students to do war work, many high schools ran year-round. "Victory shifts" were common for workers.
Hollywood produced many patriotic films justifying the war effort and celebrating military achievements, as well as comedies, songs, dances, and alluringly costumed beauties to help audiences forget their problems.
Casablanca (1942) brilliantly portrayed the self-sacrifice needed to defeat Nazism.
GIs loved Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," sung by Bing Crosby, because it captured their homesickness.
Despite many players being drafted, Major League Baseball (MLB) was the national pastime during the war.
Teams used older players or those rejected by the military for physical reasons.
Baseball fans could also follow the 1943-founded All-American Girls' Baseball League.
Women were needed in manufacturing jobs to replace millions of men in the military.
Rosie the Riveter became the symbol of these wartime working women.
Working in a war factory was patriotic.
Despite this, most mothers stayed home during the war.
Women who worked in defense industries were often underpaid.
After the war, these female workers were encouraged to patriotically resign to make room for returning servicemen.
Civil Rights During the War
Wartime jobs helped African Americans.
African Americans also volunteered to fight racialist adversaries.
Unfortunately, US racism remained.
African Americans were frequently considered better at work than fighting in segregated military formations.
African-American newspapers endorsed the Double V movement to combat Nazism and Japanese imperialism overseas and racial prejudice at home.
In 1942, African-American and white civil rights activists created Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
CORE organized early civil rights demonstrations.
West Coast Americans feared Japanese spies and saboteurs in the early conflict.
In response to these worries, President Roosevelt enacted Executive Order 9066, which put all Japanese on the West Coast, including Japanese-Americans, into internment camps.
The migration was so fast that many internees lost everything.
Japanese Americans were informed they were insulated from broad anti-Japanese sentiment, which was true.
Relocation facilities with fences and armed guards were unconsoled by this.
Japanese-Americans hated being considered enemies. T
In Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld the internment as "military necessity." The U.S. apologized and compensated survivors in 1988.
Despite this, Japanese-American troops fought separately.
The most decorated American fighting regiment was the 442nd Regiment, largely Japanese Americans from Hawaii.