The Allies Trade Space for Time

1.When Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, millions of

 infuriated Americans, especially on the west coast, instantly changed

 their views from isolationist to avenger.

 2.However, America, led by the wise Franklin D. Roosevelt, resisted

 such pressures, instead taking a “get Germany first”

 approach to the war, for if Germany were to defeat Britain before the

 Allies could beat Japan, there would be no stopping Hitler and his men. •Meanwhile, just enough troops would be sent to fight Japan to keep it in check.

3.America had the hardship of preparing for war, since it had been in

 isolation for the preceding decades, and the test would be whether or

 not it could mobilize quickly enough to stop Germany and make the world

 safe for democracy (again).

 

II. The Shock of War

1.After the attack at Pearl Harbor, national unity was strong as steel, and the few Hitler supporters in America faded away.

 2.Most of America’s ethnic groups assimilated even faster due

 to WWII, since in the decades before the war, few immigrants had been

 allowed into America. •Unfortunately, on the Pacific coast, 110,000 Japanese-Americans

 were taken from their homes and herded into internment camps where

 their properties and freedoms were taken away.

 •The 1944 case of Korematsu v. U.S. affirmed the constitutionality of these camps.

 •It took more than 40 years before the U.S. admitted fault and made $20,000 reparation payments to camp survivors.

 .With the war, many New Deal programs were wiped out, such as the

 Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration, and the

 National Youth Administration.

 4.WWII was no idealistic crusade, as most Americans didn’t even

 know what the Atlantic Charter (declaration of U.S. goals going into

 the war such as to fight Germany first, and Japan second) was.

 III. Building the War Machine

1.Massive military orders (over $100 billion in 1942 alone) ended the Great Depression by creating demand for jobs and production.

 2.Shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser was dubbed “Sir Launchalot”

 because his methods of ship assembly churned out one ship every 14 days!

 3.The War Production Board halted manufacture of nonessential items

 such as passenger cars, and when the Japanese seized vital rubber

 supplies in British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, the U.S. imposed

 a national speed limit and gasoline rationing to save tires.

 4.Farmers rolled out more food, but the new sudden spurt in

 production made prices soar—a problem that was finally solved by

 the regulation of prices by the Office of Price Administration.

 5.Many essential goods were rationed.

 6.Meanwhile labor unions pledged not to strike during the war, some did anyway. •The United Mine Workers was one such group and was led by John L. Lewis.

 •In June 1943, Congress passed the Smith-Connally Anti-Strike Act,

 which let the federal government seize and operate industries

 threatened by or under strikes.

 •Fortunately, strikes accounted for less than 1% of total working hours of the U.S. wartime laboring force.

IV. Manpower and Womanpower

1.The armed forces had nearly 15 million men and 216,000 women, and

 some of these “women in arms” included the WAACS (Army),

 the WAVES (Navy), and SPARS (Coast Guard).

 2.Because of the national draft that plucked men (and women) from

 their homes and into the military, there weren’t enough workers,

 so the Bracero Program brought Mexican workers to America as resident

 workers.

 3.With the men in the military, women took up jobs in the workplace,

 symbolized by “Rosie the Riveter,” and upon war’s

 end, many did not return to their homes as in World War I. •It must be noted that the female revolution into the work force was

 not as great as commonly exaggerated. At the end of the war, 2/3 of the

 women did return home; the servicemen that came home to them helped

 produce a baby boom that is still being felt today.

V. Wartime Migrations

1.The war also forced many people to move to new places, and many young folks went to and saw new cities far from home.

 2.FDR used the war as an excuse to pump lots of money into the

 stagnant South to revitalize it, helping to start the blossoming of the

 “Sunbelt.” •Still, some 1.6 million blacks left the South for better places,

 and explosive tensions developed over black housing, employment, and

 segregation facilities.

3.Philip Randolph, leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters,

 threatened a “Negro March to Washington” in 1941 to get

 better rights and treatment.

 4.The president also established the Fair Employment Practices

 Commission to discourage racism and oppression in the workplace, and

 while Blacks in the army still suffered degrading discrimination (i.e.

 separate blood banks), they still used the war as a rallying cry

 against dictators abroad and racism at home—overall gaining power

 and strength. •Membership to the NAACP passed the half-million mark, and a new

 organization, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), was founded in

 1942.

5.In 1944, the mechanical cotton picker made the need for muscle

 nonexistent, so blacks that used to pick cotton could now leave, since

 they were no longer needed. •They left the South and took up residence in urban areas.

 6.Native Americans also left their reservations during the war, finding work in the cities or joining the army. •Some 25,000 Native Americans were in the army, and the Navajo and

 Comanches were “code talkers,” relaying military orders in

 the own language—a “code” that was never broken by

 the Axis Powers.

7.Such sudden “rubbing of the races” did spark riots and

 cause tension, such as the 1943 attack on some Mexican-American navy

 men in Los Angeles and the Detroit race riot (occurring in the same

 year) that killed 25 blacks and 9 whites.

 

VII. The Rising Sun in the Pacific

1.The Japanese overran the lands that they descended upon, winning

 more land with less losses than ever before and conquering Guam, Wake,

 the Philippines, Hong Kong, British Malaya, Burma (in the process

 cutting the famed Burma Road), the Dutch East Indies, and even pushing

 into China.

 2.When the Japanese took over the Philippines, U.S. General Douglas

 MacArthur had to sneak out of the place, but he vowed to return to

 liberate the islands; he went to Australia.

 3.After the fighters in the Philippines surrendered, they were forced to make the infamous 85-mile Bataan death march. •On May 6, 1942, the island fortress of Corregidor, in Manila Harbor, surrendered.

 VIII. Japan’s High Tide at Midway

1.The Japanese onrush was finally checked in the Coral Sea by

 American and Australian forces in the world’s 1st naval battle

 where the ships never saw one another (they fought with aircraft via

 carriers). And, when the Japanese tried to seize Midway Island, they

 were forced back by U.S. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz during fierce

 fighting from June 3-6, 1942. •Midway proved to be the turning point that stopped Japanese expansion.

 •Admiral Raymond A. Spruance also helped maneuver the fleet to win,

 and this victory marked the turning point in the war in the Pacific.

 •No longer would the Japanese take any more land, as the U.S. began

 a process called “island hopping,” where the Allies would

 bypass heavily fortified islands, take over neighboring islands, and

 starve the resistant forces to death with lack of supplies and constant

 bombing saturation, to push back the Japanese.

 2.Also, the Japanese had taken over some islands in the Alaskan chain, the Aleutians.

 

XI. A Second Front from North Africa to Rome

1.The Soviets had begged the Allies to open up a second front against

 Hitler, since Soviet forces were dying by the millions (20 million by

 war’s end), and the Americans were eager to comply, but the

 British, remembering WWI, were reluctant. •Instead of a frontal European assault, the British devised an

 invasion through North Africa, so that the Allies could cut

 Hitler’s forces through the “soft underbelly” of the

 Mediterranean Sea.

2.Thus, a secret attack was coordinated and executed by Dwight D.

 Eisenhower as they defeated the French troops, but upon meeting the

 real German soldiers, Americans were set back at Kasserine Pass. •This soft underbelly campaign wasn’t really successful, as

 the underbelly wasn’t as soft as Churchill had guessed, but

 important lessons were learned.

3.At the Casablanca Conference, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston

 Churchill met and agreed on the term of “unconditional

 surrender.”

4.The Allies found bitter resistance in Italy, but Sicily finally fell in August 1943. •Italian dictator Mussolini was deposed, and a new government was set up. •Two years later, he and his mistress were lynched and killed.

 •Germany didn’t leave Italy, though, and for many months, more

 fighting and stalemates occurred, especially at Monte Cassino, where

 Germans were holed up.

 5.The Allies finally took Rome on June 4, 1944, and it wasn’t

 until May 2, 1945, that Axis troops in Italy finally surrendered.

 6.Though long and tiring, the Italian invasion did open up Europe,

 divert some of Hitler’s men from the Soviet front, and helping

 cause Italy to fall.

 

XII. D-Day: June 6, 1944

1.At the Tehran Conference, the Big Three (FDR, Churchill, and Josef

 Stalin, leader of Russia) met and agreed that the Soviets and Allies

 would launch simultaneous attacks.

 2.The Allies began plans for a gigantic cross-channel invasion, and

 command of the whole operation was entrusted to General Eisenhower. •Meanwhile, MacArthur received a fake army to use as a ruse to Germany.

 3.The point of attack was French Normandy, and on June 6, 1944, D-Day

 began—the amphibious assault on Normandy. After heavy resistance,

 Allied troops, some led by General George S. Patton, finally clawed

 their way onto land, across the landscape, and deeper into France. •With the help of the “French underground,” Paris was freed in August of 1944.

 XIII. FDR: The Fourth-Termite of 1944

1.Republicans nominated Thomas E. Dewey, a young, liberal governor of

 New York, and paired him with isolationist John W. Bricker of Ohio.

 2.FDR was the Democratic lock, but because of his age, the vice

 presidential candidate was carefully chosen to be Harry S. Truman, who

 won out over Henry A. Wallace—an ill-balanced and unpredictable

 liberal.

 XIV. Roosevelt Defeats Dewey

1.Dewey went on a rampaging campaign offensive while FDR, stuck with WWII problems, could not go out much. •The new Political Action Committee of the CIO contributed

 considerable money. It was organized to get around the law banning

 direct use of union funds for political purposes.

2.In the end, Roosevelt stomped Dewey, 432 to 99, the fourth term

 issue wasn’t even that big of a deal, since the precedent had

 already been broken three years before.

 3.FDR won because the war was going well, and because people wanted to stick with him.

 

XV. The Last Days of Hitler

1.On the retreat and losing, Hitler concentrated his forces and threw

 them in the Ardennes forest on December 16, 1944, starting the Battle

 of “the Bulge.” He nearly succeeded in his gamble, but the

 ten-day penetration was finally stopped by the 101st Airborne Division

 that had stood firm at the vital bastion of Bastogne, which was

 commanded by Brigadier General A.C. McAuliffe.

 2.In March 1945, the Americans reached the Rhine River of Germany,

 and then pushed toward the river Elbe, and from there, joining Soviet

 troops, they marched toward Berlin.

 3.Upon entering Germany, the Allies were horrified to find the

 concentration camps where millions of Jews and other

 “undesirables” had been slaughtered in attempted genocide. •Adolph Hitler, knowing that he had lost, committed suicide in his bunker on April 30, 1945.

 4.Meanwhile, in America, FDR had died from a massive cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945.

 5.May 7, 1945 was the date of the official German surrender, and the

 next day was officially proclaimed V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day).

 

XVI. Japan Dies Hard

1.American submarines were ruining Japan’s fleet, and attacks

 such as the March 9-10, 1945 firebomb raid on Tokyo that killed over

 83,000 people were wearing Japan out.

 2.On October 20, 1944, General MacArthur finally “returned” to the Philippines. •However, he didn’t retake Manila until March 1945.

 3.The last great naval battle at Leyte Gulf was lost by Japan, terminating its sea power status.

 4.In March 1945, Iwo Jima was captured; this 25-day assault left over 4,000 Americans dead.

 5.Okinawa was won after fighting from April to June of 1945, and was captured at the cost of 50,000 American lives. •Japanese “kamikaze” suicide pilots, for the sake of

 their god-emperor, unleashed the full fury of their terror at Okinawa

 in a last-ditch effort.

 

XVII. The Atomic Bombs

1.At the Potsdam Conference, the Allies issued an ultimatum: surrender or be destroyed.

 2.The first atomic bomb had been tested on July 16, 1945, near

 Alamogordo, New Mexico, and when Japan refused to surrender, Americans

 dropped A-bombs onto Hiroshima (on August 6, 1945), killing 180,000 and

 Nagasaki (on August 9, 1945), killing 80,000.

 3.On August 8, 1945, the Soviets declared war on Japan, just as

 promised, and two days later, on August 10, Japan sued for peace on one

 condition: that the Emperor Hirohito be allowed to remain on the

 Japanese throne. •Despite the “unconditional surrender” clause, the Allies accepted.

 4.The formal end came on September 2, 1945, on the battleship U.S.S. Missouri where Hirohito surrendered to General MacArthur.