Chapter 35 America in World War II, 1941–1945. I. The Allies Trade Space for Time Time was the most needed munition: – Expense was no limitation – America’s

Chapter 35America in

World War II, 1941–1945

I. The Allies Trade Space for Time

• Time was the most needed munition:– Expense was no limitation– America’s problem was to retool itself for all-out war

production• Dictators would not crush their adversaries• German scientists might find the unbeatable secret

weapon.

– America’s task:• It had to feed, clothe, and arm itself• It had to transport its forces to regions as far separated as

Britain and Burma.

I. The Allies Trade Space for Time(cont.)

– It had to send a vast amount of food and munitions to its hard-pressed allies• Who stretched all the way from the USSR to

Australia.

II. The Shock of War

• National unity was no worry, since the bombing of Pearl Harbor:

• American Communists denounced the Anglo-French “imperialist” war– Clamoring for an unmitigated assault on the Axis powers

• Pro-Hitlerites in the United States melted away• Millions of Italian Americans and German Americans

were loyal supporters of the nation’s war programs• World War II speeded the assimilation of many ethnic

groups into American society• No government witch-hunting of minority groups.

II. The Shock of War(cont.)

• Painful exception—the plight of 110,000 Japanese Americans, mainly on the Pacific Coast (see pp. 800-801)– Government forcibly herded them together in concentration

camps

• Executive Order No. 9066:– The internment camps deprived these uprooted Americans of

dignity and basic rights– The internees lost hundreds of millions of dollars in property

and forgone earnings– The Supreme Court 1944 upheld the constitutionality of the

Japanese relocation in Korematsu v. U.S.– In 1988 the U.S. government officially apologized and approved

the payment of reparations of $20,000 to each camp survivor.

II. The Shock of War(cont.)

• War prompted changes in the American mood:– Many New Deal programs were wiped away– The era of the New Deal was over– World War II was no idealistic crusade– U.S. government now put emphasis on action.

p800

p801

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p802

III. Building the War Machine

• American economy snapped to attention:• Massive military orders—over $100 billion in 1942

alone—soaked up the ideal industrial capacity• War Production Board (WPB):

– Halted the manufacture of nonessential items—passenger cars

– Assigned priorities for transportation and access to raw materials

– Imposed a national speed limit and gasoline rating in order to conserve rubber and built 51 synthetic-rubber plants

– By war’s end they were far outproducing the prewar supply.

III. Building the War Machine(cont.)

• Farmers increased their output• The armed forces drained the farms of workers• But heavy new investment in agricultural machinery

and improved fertilizers more than made up the difference• In 1944 and 1945 the farmers hauled in record-

breaking billion-bushel wheat harvests.

• Economic strains:• Full employment and scarce consumer goods fueled a

sharp inflationary surge in 1942.


– The Office of Price Administration (OPA):• Eventually brought ascending prices under control

with extensive regulations• Rationing held down the consumption of critical

goods• Though some “black marketeers” and “meatleggers”

cheated the system

– The National War Labor Board (NWLB): • Imposed ceilings on wage increases


• Labor conditions:– Labor union membership increased from 10

million to more than 13 million during the war• They fiercely resented the government-dictated wage

ceilings• A rash of labor walkouts plagued the war efforts• Prominent among the strikers were the United Mine

Workers:– Called off the job by the union chieftain, John L. Lewis.


• The Smith-Connally Anti-Strike Act: June, 1943:– Authorized the federal government to seize and

operate tied-up industries– Strikes against any government-operated industry

were made a criminal offense– Washington took over the coal mines, and for a

brief time, the railroads– Work stoppages actually accounted for less than

one percent of the total working hours of U.S.’ wartime laboring force.

p803

IV. Manpower and Womanpower

• The armed service enlistments:– 15 million men in World War II– 216,000 women, who were employed for

noncombat duties– “Women in arms” were the WACs (Women’s

Army Corps), WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) (navy), SPARs (U.S. Coast Guard Women’s Reserve)

– Millions of young men were clothed in “GI” government issue) outfits.

IV. Manpower and Womanpower(cont.)

– Exempted industrial and agricultural workers from the draft

– Still there was a shortage of farms and factory workers

– The Bracero program:• Mexican agricultural workers, called braceros, came

to harvest the fruit and grain crops of the West• The Bracero program outlived the war by some

twenty years, becoming a fixed feature of the agricultural economy in many western states.

IV. Manpower and Womanpower (cont.)

• 6 million women took joys outside their homes:– Over half had never before worked for wages– Government was obliged to set up 3,000 day-care

centers to care for “Rosie the Riveter’s” children– At the end of the war many women were not

eager to give up the work– The war foreshadowed an eventual revolution in

the roles of women in American society.

IV. Manpower and Womanpower(cont.)

• Many women did not work for wages in the wartime economy, but continued traditional roles• At war’s end, 2/3 of women war workers left the

labor force• Many were forced out by returning service-men• Many quit their jobs voluntarily because of family

obligations• There was a widespread rush into suburban domes-

ticity and the mothering of the “baby boomers.”

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p804

V. Wartime Migrations

• Demographic changes:– 15 million men and women decided not to

return home again– War industries sucked people into boomtowns—

Los Angeles, Detroit, Seattle, Baton Rouge– California’s population grew by 2 million– The south experienced dramatic changes:• Here were the seeds of the postwar blossoming of

the “Sunbelt” (see Map 35.1)

V. Wartime Migrations(cont.)

– Some 1.6 millions blacks left the South for jobs in the war plants of the West and North

– Forever after, race relations constituted a national, not a regional, issue

– Explosive tensions developed over employment, housing, and segregated facilities• Roosevelt issued an executive order forbidding

discrimination in defense industries• He established the Fair Employment Practices Com-

mission (FEPC):– To monitor compliance with his edict.


– Blacks were drafted into the armed forces:• Assigned to service branches rather than combat units• Subjected to petty degradations:

– Segregated blood banks for the wounded

• In general the war helped to embolden blacks in their long struggle for equality

• Slogan—“Double V”—victory over the dictators abroad and over racism at home

• Membership in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) shot up to the half-million mark:


– A new militant organization committed to nonviolent “direct action”, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) 1942.

– The northward migration of African Americans accelerated after the war:• Thanks to the advent of the mechanical cotton picker• Introduced in 1944, this machine did the work of 50

people at about 1/8th the cost• The Cotton South’s historic need for cheap labor dis-

appeared• Some 5 million black tenant farmers and sharecrop- pers

headed north in the decades after the war– One of the great migrations in American history.


– By 1970 half of the blacks lived outside the South• And urban became almost became a synonym for black

• The war prompted an exodus of Native Americans from the reservation– Thousands, men and women, found work in the

major cities– Thousands more went into the armed forces

• 90% of Indians resided on reservations in 1940• 6 decades later ½ lived in cities, more in southern Calif.


– 25,000 men served in the armed forces– Served as “code talkers”

• They transmitted radio messages in their native languages, which were incomprehensible to the Germans and Japanese.

• Rubbing together created some violent friction:– Mexican Americans in Los Angeles were viciously

attacked by Anglo sailors– Brutal race riot killed 25 blacks and 9 whites in

Detroit.

Map 35-1 p805

p806

p806

p807

VI. Holding the Home Front

• Americans on the home front suffered little:– The war invigorated the economy– Lifted the country out of a decade-long depression– The gross national product rose from $100 billion

in 1940 to more than $200 billion in 1945– Corporate profits rose from $6 billion in 1940 to

almost twice that amount four years later– Despite wage ceiling, overtime pay fattened pay

envelopes.

VI. Holding the Home Front(cont.)

– Prices rose up to 33% in 1948– The hand of the government touched lives more

• Post-1945 era of big-government interventionism• Households felt the constraints of the rationing system• Millions, men/women, worked for the government in

the armed forces• Millions worked in the defense industries• The Office of Scientific Research and Development

channeled hundreds of millions of dollars into univer-sity-based scientific research—establishing partner-ships with the government.

V. Holding the Home Front(cont.)

• Government dollars swept unemployment from the land• War, not enlightened social policy, cured the

depression• 1941-1945 as the origins of a “warfare-welfare state.”

– The conflict was phenomenally expensive• War bill amounted to more than $330 billion—

– 10 times the direct cost of World War I– Twice as much as all previous federal spending since 1776

• Roosevelt would have preferred a pay-as-you-go• The cost was simply too gigantic

V. Holding the Home Front(cont.)

• The income tax net was expanded and the rate rose as high as 90%• Only two-fifths of the war costs were paid from

current revenues• The remainder was borrowed• The national debt skyrocketed from $49 billion in

1941 to $259 billion in 1945 (see Figure 35.1).• When production slipped into high gear, the war was

costing about $10 million an hour• That was the price of victory over such implacable

enemies.

VII. The Rising Sun in the Pacific

• Early successes of the efficient Japanese militarists were breathtaking:– They would have to win quickly or lose slowly– They expanded into the Far Eastern bastions:

• American outposts of Guam, Wake, the Philippines• They seized the British-Chinese city port of Hong Kong

and British Malaya• They plunged into the snake-infested jungles of Burma• They lunged southward against the oil-rich Dutch East

Indies

VII. The Rising Sun in the Pacific(cont.)

– Better news came from the Philippines, which succeeded in slowing down the Japanese

– When the Japanese landed, General Douglas MacArthur withdrew to a strong defensive position at Bataan, not far from Manila:• Here 20,000 American troops, supported by a force

of ill-trained Filipinos, held off the Japanese attacks until April 9, 1942• Before the inevitable American surrender, MacArthur

was ordered to depart secretly for Australia

VII. The Rising Sun in the Pacific(cont.)

• His army remnants were treated with vicious cruelty in the infamous eighty-mile Bataan Death March to prisoner-of-war camps:– First in a series of atrocities committed by both sides.

• The island fortress of Corregidor, in Manila harbor, – Held out until May 6, 1942, when it too surrendered– Which left Japanese forces in complete control of the

Philippine archipelago (see Map 35.2).

Figure 35-1 p808

VIII. Japan’s High Tide at Midway

– The Japanese continual march:• Invaded New Guinea, and landed on the Solomon Islands• Their onrush finally checked by a crucial naval battle

fought in the Coral Sea, May 1942• America, with Australian support, inflicted heavy losses

on the victory-flushed Japanese• First time the fighting was done by carrier-based aircraft• Japan next undertook to seize Midway Island:

– Epochal Battle of Midway, June 3-6, 1942—Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, fighting done by aircraft and the Japanese broke action after losing four vitally important carriers.

VIII. Japan’s High Tide at Midway(cont.)

• Midway was a pivotal battle:– Combined with the Battle of the Coral Sea, the

U.S. success at Midway halted Japan’s fighting• They did get America’s islands of Kiska and Attu• These victories caused fear of an invasion of the

United States through Alaska

– Japanese imperialists, overextended in 1942, suffered from “victory disease”• Their appetites were bigger than their stomachs

Map 35-2 p809

p809

IX. American Leapfrogging Toward Tokyo

• America seized the initiative in the Pacific:– In 1942 American gained a toehold on

Guadalcanal Island• Japanese troops evacuated the island in February, 1943• Japan losses were 20,000, compared to 1,700 for the

Americans• American and Australian forces under General Douglas

MacArthur held on in New Guinea, the last buffer protecting Australia

• The scales of war began to tip.

IX. American Leapfrogging Toward Tokyo (cont.)

– The U.S. Navy, with marines and army divisions, began “leapfrogging” the Japanese-held islands in the Pacific• As the American forces drove toward Tokyo, they

reduced the fortified Japanese outposts• Island hopping strategy called for:

– Bypassing the most heavily fortified Japanese posts– Capturing nearby islands – Setting up airfields on them – Then neutralizing the enemy bases through heavy bombing– Deprived of essential supplies from the homeland, Japan’s

outpost would slowly wither on the vine—as they did.


• Brilliant success crowned American attacks on the Japanese island strongholds in the Pacific:– Islands were being recaptured from the

Japanese– Especially prized were the Marianas, including

America’s conquered Guam• Assault on the Marianas opened June 19, 1944:• 250 Japanese antiaircraft destroyed, with only a loss

of 29 American planes


• The following day, in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, U.S. naval forces sank several Japanese carriers• The Japanese navy never recovered• A mass suicide leap of surviving Japanese soldiers and

civilians from “Suicide Cliff,” the major islands of Marianas fell to U.S. attackers in July-August, 1944• Bombing of Japan began November 1944 (see Map

35.3)

X. The Allied Halting of Hitler

• Hitler entered the war in 1942:– The tide of subsea battle turned slowly• The old techniques of warfare were being

strengthened by new methods:– Air patrol – The newly invented technology of radar– The bombing of submarine bases

• Eventually Allied antisubmarine tactics improved:– British code breakers

• 1945 the Allies had the upper hand against the U-boat.

X. The Allied Halting of Hitler(cont.)

• The turning point of the land-air war against Hitler had come late in 1942:

• British had launched a thousand-plane raid on Cologne in May

• In August they joined the American air force with cascading bombs on German cities

• The Germans under Marshal Erwin Rommel—the “Desert Fox”—drove across North Africa into Egypt

• In October 1942, British general Bernard Montgomery delivered an attack at El Alamein, west of Cairo

• With the aid of American tanks, he speedily drove the enemy back to Tunisia.

X. The Allied Halting of Hitler(cont.)

• In September 1942 the Russians stalled the German steamroller at Stalingrad, graveyard of Hitler’s hopes:– Scores of invading divisions surrendered– In November 1942 the Russians unleashed a

crushing counteroffensive– 1943 Stalin had regained about 2/3 of the blood-

soaked Soviet motherland from the German invader.

Map 35-3 p811

XI. A Second Front from North Africa to Rome

• Losses:• Soviet—millions of soldiers and civilians lay dead

– Hitler’s armies had overrun most of western USSR

• Anglo-American losses—counted only in the thousands• By war’s end some 20 millions Soviets had died

– Americans, including FDR, wanted to invade France in 1942 or 1943:• British military were not enthusiastic about a frontal

attack on German-held France.

XI. A Second Front from North Africa to Rome (cont.)

• They preferred to attack Hitler’s Fortress Europe through the “soft underbelly” of the Mediterranean

• The American reluctantly agreed to postpone a massive invasion of Europe

• An assault on French-held North Africa was a compro-mise second front– The highly secret attack in November 1942 was led by

American general Dwight D. (“Ike”) Eisenhower– With joint Allied operations the invasion was the mightiest

waterborne effort up to that time in history– After savage fighting, the remnants of the German-Italian

army were finally trapped in Tunisia and surrendered in May, 1943.


• Casablanca:– Roosevelt met with Churchill in January 1943:– The Big Two agreed to:

• Step up the Pacific war• Invade Sicily• Increase pressure on Italy • Insist on “unconditional surrender” of the enemy.

– Unconditional surrender was one of the most controversial moves of the war:• Main criticism—it steeled the enemy to fight to a last

bunker resistance


• While discouraging antiwar groups in Germany from revolting

• No one can prove that “unconditional surrender” either shortened or lengthened the war

• But what is known:– By helping to destroy the German government utterly, the

harsh policy forced a thorough postwar reconstruction

– The Allied forces, victorious in Africa, now turned against the not-so-soft underbelly in Europe:• Sicily fell in August 1943• Mussolini was deposed


• Italy surrendered unconditionally in September 1943• Hitler’s well-trained troops stubbornly resisted the

Allied invaders• The Germans unleashed their fury against the Italians

who had declared war on Germany October 1943• Italy appeared to be a dead end• Rome was finally taken on June 4, 1944 • The Allies continued to fight into northern Italy• May 2, 1945, only five days before Germany’s official

surrender, several hundred thousand Axis troops in Italy laid down their arms and became prisoners of war.

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XII. D-Day: June 6, 1944

• The Soviets:• Never ceased their clamor for an all-out second front• Marshall Joseph Stalin balked at leaving Moscow

– Tehran, the capital of Iran (Persia) was finally chosen at the meeting place:

– Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin—November 28-December 1, 1943– Progressed smoothly– Most important achievement was agreement on broad plans,

especially those for launching Soviet attacks on Germany

• Preparations for the cross-channel invasion of France were gigantic

XII. D-Day: June 6, 1944(cont.)

– D-Day, June 6, 1944:• The enormous operation, involved some 4,600 vessels,

unwound• After desperate fighting, the invaders finally broke out

of the German iron ring that enclosed the Normandy landing zone

• Spectacular were the lunges across France by American armored divisions under General Patton

• The retreat of the German defenders was hastened when an American-French force landed in August 1944 on the southern coast of France and swept northward

XII. D-Day: June 6, 1944(cont.)

• With the assistance of the French “underground” Paris was liberated in August 1944.• Allies forces rolled irresistibly toward Germany• The first important German city (Aachen) fell to the

Americans in October 1944• And the days of Hitler’s “thousand-year Reich” were

numbered (see Map 35.4).

p814

XIII. FDR: The Fourth-Termite of 1944

• The presidential campaign of 1944:– Republicans:• Met in Chicago with hopeful enthusiasm• They quickly nominated Thomas E. Dewey—mild

internationalism• Nominated for vice president, a strong isolationist,

Senator John W. Bricker of Ohio• Platform called for unstinted prosecution of the war

and the creation of a new international organization to maintain peace.

XIII. FDR: the Fourth-Termite of 1944 (cont.)

– Democrats:• FDR was the “indispensable man”• He was nominated at Chicago on the first ballot by

acclamation• In a sense he was the “forgotten man” of the

convention• An unusual amount of attention was focused on the

vice presidency:– Henry A. Wallace, having served four years as vice president,

desired a renomination– Conservative Democrats distrusted him as an ill-balanced and

unpredictable liberal

XIII. FDR: The Fourth-Termite of 1944 (cont.)

– A “ditch Wallace” move developed tremendous momentum, despite his popularity

– With Roosevelt’s blessing, the vice-presidential nomination went to Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri (the new Missouri Compromise”)

Map 35-4 p815

XIV. Roosevelt Defeats Dewey

• Dewey took the offensive:• Denounced the tired and quarrelsome “old men” in

Washington• He proclaimed repeatedly that after “twelve long

years” of New Dealism, it was “time for a change”• As for the war: he would not alter the basic strategy

but would fight it better—a type of “me-tooism” ridiculed by the Democrats• The fourth-tem issue did not figure prominently; they

did fear fifth and sixth terms by the “lifer” in the White House.

XIV. Roosevelt Defeats Dewey(cont.)

• New political action committee of the CIO:– Was organized to get around the law banning the

direct use of union funds for political purposes– FDR was opposed by a majority of the newspapers,

which were owned chiefly by Republicans

• Results of the election:– Roosevelt won a sweeping victory– 432 to 99 in the Electoral College – 25,606,585 to 22,014,745 in the popular vote.

XIV. Roosevelt Defeats Dewey(cont.)

– Roosevelt won primarily because the war was going well

– Foreign policy was a decisive factor:• Strength and experience was needed in fashioning a

future organization for world peace• Dewey had spoken smoothly of international

cooperation • His isolationist running mate, Bricker, had implanted

serious doubts• The Republican party was still suffering from the taint

of isolationism fastened on it by the Hardingites.

XV. The Last Days of Hitler

• Hitler’s last attempt:– On December 16, 1944, he hurled an attack against the

American lines in the Ardennes Forest– His objective was the Belgian port of Antwerp, key to the Allied

supply operation– Ten day operation was halted after the 101st Airborne Division

had stood firm at the vital bastion of Bastogne– Brigadier General A. C. McAuliffe defiantly answered the

German demand for surrender with one word: “Nuts.”– Reinforcements were rushed up, and the last-gasp Hitlerian

offensive was stemmed in the Battle of the Bulge (Map 35.5).

• In March 1945 forward-driving American troops reached Germany’s Rhine River

XV. The Last Days of Hitler(cont.)

– General Eisenhower’s troops reached the Elbe River in April 1945» Americans and Soviets clasped hands» American found blood-spattered and still-stinking con-

centration camps where the Nazis had engaged in the scientific mass murder of “undesirables” and an estimated 6 million Jews.

• The American government had long been informed of Hitler’s campaign of genocide against the Jews:– Had been reprehensibly slow to take steps against it– Roosevelt’s administration had bolted the doors against large

numbers of Jewish refugees– And even refused to bomb the rail lines that carried the

victims to the camps

XV. The Last Days of Hitler(cont.)

– The Soviets reached Berlin in April 1945– Adolf Hitler committed suicide in an underground

bunker on April 30, 1945– President Roosevelt suddenly died at Warm

Springs, Georgia, April 12, 1945– Vice President Truman took the helm– On May 7, 1945, the German government

surrendered unconditionally– May 8 was officially proclaimed V-E (Victory in

Europe) Day.

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Map 35-5 p816

p818

XVI. Japan Dies Hard

– American submarines—“the silent service”—were destroying the Japanese merchant marine:• These “undersea craft” destroyed 1,042 ships

– 50% of Japan’s entire life-sustaining merchant fleet

• Giant bomber attacks were more spectacular:– They were reducing the enemy’s cities to cinders– The massive firebomb raid on Tokyo, March 9-10, 1945, was

annihilating– It destroyed over 250,000 buildings, a quarter of the city, and

killed an estimated 83,000 people.

• General MacArthur was on the move:– Completed the conquest of New Guinea, he moved north-west for

the Philippines—600 ships and 250,000 men

XVI. Japan Dies Hard(cont.)

– Landed on ashore at Leyte Island on October 20, 1944– Japan’s navy made one last effort to destroy MacArthur– A gigantic clash at Leyte Gulf, fought on the sea, and in the

air, was actually three battles (October 23-26, 1944)

• The Americans won all of them– Japan was through as a sea power– It had lost about 60 ships– Overrunning Leyte, MacArthur landed on the main

Philippine island of Luzon in January 1944– Manila was his major objective—the ravaged city fell in

March – But the Philippines were not conquered until July– The American toll was over sixty thousand

XVI. Japan Dies Hard(cont.)

– Japan’s capture:• Iwo Jima was captured in March 1945

– 25 day assault cost over four thousand American dead

• Okinawa from April to June, 1945– Sold Okinawa for 50,000 American casualties, while suffering

far heavier losses themselves– The U.S. Navy, which covered the invasion of Okinawa,

sustained severe damage

• Japanese suicide pilots (“kamikazes”) crashed their bomb-laden planes on to the decks of the invading fleet.– All told, the death squads sank over thirty ships and badly

damaged scores more.

p819

XVII. The Atomic Bombs

• Washington planning an all-out invasion of the main islands of Japan:

• Tokyo had secretly sent out peace feelers to Moscow• Americans, having broken the secret Japanese radio codes,

knew of these feelers• Bomb-scorched Japan still showed no outward willingness to

surrender unconditionally to the Allies

– The Potsdam conference:• Near Berlin July 1945, sounded the death knell of the

Japanese• Truman met in a 17 day parley with Joseph Stalin and the

British leaders

XVII. The Atomic Bomb(cont.)

• The conference issued a strong ultimatum to Japan:– Surrender or be destroyed– American bombers showered the dire warning to Japan in

tens of thousands of leaflets; no encouraging response– America had a fantastic ace up its sleeve– Roosevelt persuaded Albert Einstein to push for unlocking

the secret of an atomic bomb– Congress, at Roosevelt’s request, made available $2 billion

• The Manhattan Project pushed feverishly forward:– In the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16,

1945, the experts detonated the first awesome and devas-tating atomic device.

XVI. The Atomic Bomb(cont.)

• With Japan still refusing to surrender, the Potsdam threat was fulfilled– On August 6, 1945, a lone American bomber

dropped one atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan• About 180,000 people were killed, wounded or missing• Some 70,000 of them died instantaneously• 60,000 more soon perished from burns and radiation

disease.

– Two days later, August 8, Stalin entered the war against Japan

• XVI. The Atomic Bomb(cont.)

• Soviet armies speedily overran the depleted Japanese defenses in Manchuria and Korea in a six-day “victory parade”:– That involved several thousand Russian casualties– Japanese, facing atomization, still did not surrender.

• On August 9 American aviators dropped a second one on the city of Nagasaki:– Toll of about 80,000 were killed or missing (see p. 825)

• On August 10, 1945 Tokyo sued for peace on one condition:– That Hirohito, the bespectacled Son of Heaven, be allowed to

remain on his ancestral throne as nominal emperor– Accepted by the Allies on August 14, 1945.

XVI. The Atomic Bomb(cont.)

• The formal end came, with dramatic force, on September 2, 1945:– Official surrender was conducted by General

MacArthur on the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay

– At the same time, Americans at home hysterically celebrated V-J (Victory in Japan) Day

p820

XVIII. The Allies Triumphant

• World War II proved to be terribly costly:– American forces suffered some 1 million

casualties• More than one-third of which were deaths• Sharply reduced because of the use of blood plasma

and “miracle” drugs, notably penicillin

– The Soviet suffered casualties many times greater; more than 25 million people were killed

– The first war that killed more civilians than armed combatants (see pp. 822-823).

XVIII. The Allies Triumphant(cont.)

• Other results:– America emerged with its mainland virtually

unscathed– A few Japanese fire-bombs had drifted across the Pacific, killing six

in Oregon– Much of the rest of the world was utterly destroyed and destitute

• It was the best fought war in American history:– Unprepared at first , the nation was better prepared than others– It was fighting German submarines before Pearl Harbor– The United States proved itself to be resourceful, tough,

adaptable, able to accommodate itself to the tactics of an enemy who was relentless and ruthless.

XVIII. The Allies Triumphant(cont.)

• American leadership proved to be of the highest order:

• Brilliant generals—Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Marshall (chief of staff), admirals Nimitz and Spruance

• Collaboration between Roosevelt and Churchill in planning strategy

• Industrial leaders were skilled, marvels of production were performed daily

• Assembly lines proved as important as battles lines• Victory went again to the side of the smokestacks

XVIII. The Allied Triumphant(cont.)

– The enemy was almost literally smothered by bayonets, bullets, bazookas, and bombs

• The American way of war was simply more:– More men, more weapons, more machines, more technology,

and more money than any enemy could hope to match– From 1940-1945 the output of American factories was simply

phenomenal

• Americans had given its answer:– Democracy had overthrown and discredited dictators– Washington exercised a large among of control over the

individual during the war emergency– But the American people preserved their precious liberties

without serious impairment.

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p822

Table 35-1 p823

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p824

p826

Documents

Chapter 35 America in World War II, 1941–1945. I. The Allies Trade Space for Time Time was the most needed munition: – Expense was no limitation – America’s