Chapter 35 America in World War II,mrcasey.weebly.com/uploads/8/4/3/1/8431925/chapter_35.pdf · •American Communists denounced the Anglo-French “imperialist” war –Clamoring

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 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.

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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.

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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.


• 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.


• 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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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.

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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

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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).

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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”)

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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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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.

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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

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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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Documents

Chapter 35 America in World War II,mrcasey.weebly.com/uploads/8/4/3/1/8431925/chapter_35.pdf · •American Communists denounced the Anglo-French “imperialist” war –Clamoring