America: Pathways to the Present Text

America: Pathways to the Present | Chapter 18: Americans at War (1941–1945)

This chapter focuses on America’s involvement in World War II. The chapter is divided into five sections: Mobilization, Retaking Europe, the Holocaust, the War in the Pacific, and the Social Impact of the War.

Section 1: Mobilization

Main Ideas

  • The American government needed to quickly mobilize industry as well as the armed forces to fight the Axis Powers.
  • The mobilization effort put Americans back to work and brought about economic recovery from the Great Depression.

Summary and Analysis
As early as December 1940, a full year before the U.S. officially entered WWI, President Roosevelt began to marshal the resources of the United States to prepare for a war he saw as inevitable. Congress authorized the first peace time draft with the Selective Service and Training Act, which began to bring over 16 million Americans into military training. America also increased its defense spending from $2 billion to $10 billion over the course of the year.

Just as in World War I, the U.S. government also regulated the economy to provide support and materials for the war. The War Production Board decided how natural resources would be used to best supply U.S. troops, and the Office of War Mobilization oversaw the production of goods. War-related materials took precedence over consumer goods. Despite the efforts of the Office of Price Controls, prices rose significantly and there were shortages of many consumer products throughout the war. Many goods such as food products and gasoline were rationed. People all over the country contributed to the war effort with “Victory Gardens,” recycling drives, and blackout drills to test American readiness for possible bombing raids.

The government financed the war with increased tax revenues and by borrowing money. Government war-bond sales to American citizens raised over $186 billion. The national debt rose from $43 billion in 1940 to $259 billion in 1945.

Section 2: Retaking Europe

Main Idea

  • The Allies waged war in the Atlantic, North Africa, the Soviet Union, and western Europe to defeat the Germans.

Summary and Analysis
When America joined the war in 1941, the outlook seemed bleak for the Allies. Hitler had taken control of nearly all of Europe, going as far as Stalingrad in the east to the edge of the Atlantic in the west. Hitler had also taken much of North Africa. In August of 1941, FDR and Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, made a joint pact of wartime principles known as the Atlantic Charter, which formed the basis of their wartime goals and later provided the basis of the foundation of the United Nations.

The first area of battle for Americans upon their entry into the war was with the German navy and U-boats in the Atlantic Ocean. The U.S. navy developed convoys, sonar, and submarine-hunting aircraft to greatly decrease the rate of German success on the high seas. The U.S. also began a campaign in North Africa against both Italian troops and the German forces under General Erwin Rommel. Although experiencing early difficulties, the Allies had the Axis forces in North Africa trapped by May of 1943. Churchill and Roosevelt then met at Casablanca in Morocco to plan out the rest of the war.

In July 1943, the Allies invaded Italy, finally breaking through German lines in May 1944. The German forces in northern Italy surrendered in April 1945. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, the German advance had finally been checked at Stalingrad along the Volga River as the Germans got bogged down in fierce house-to-house fighting and the incredibly cold Russian winter. The Russian front was the bloodiest battleground of the war. The Germans lost more than 330,000 men at Stalingrad alone. Russian casualties are unknown, but estimates put losses at over a million men. To take the pressure off Russia, Stalin had for some time been urging Britain and America to attack the Germans from the west. On June 6, 1944, the Allies invaded Normandy on what became known as D-Day. Although Allied losses were high, the invasion was successful and was the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany. Western forces finally met advancing Soviet forces on the Elbe River in Germany on April 25th. Hitler committed suicide on April 30th, and on May 8, 1945, German forces finally surrendered.

Section 3: The Holocaust

Main Idea

  • During the course of the war, the Nazis murdered millions of people, primarily Jews, in death camps.

Summary and Analysis
European Jews had suffered from persecution for centuries, but legal discrimination against the Jews had been on the wane since the mid-nineteenth century. Hitler believed in the idea of Aryan superiority and felt that Jews were racially inferior and were to blame for the loss of World War I. From the time he came to power in 1933, he made anti-Semitism the official policy of Germany. Jews were excluded from much of the political and economic life of the country. Most Jews lost their jobs, Jewish children were expelled from public schools, and Jewish doctors and lawyers could only work for other Jews. The persecution got worse after Kristallnacht, or the “Night of the Broken Glass,” when Jewish synagogues, businesses, and homes were attacked. Soon Hitler began to round up the Jewish people into ghettos and send them to prison camps. Also sent to these camps were gypsies, homosexuals, and other “undesirables.” In 1942, Nazi officials met at the Wannsee Conference to plan the genocide of European Jews in special death camps in Poland. The death camps employed a gas called Zyklon B to murder millions of inmates. Although Roosevelt and Churchill new of the existence of the death camps as early as 1942, the world did little to help the victims. Allied soldiers liberating the camps in 1945 were shocked and horrified at the living skeletons they found struggling to survive as well as by the number of dead. Over six million Jews and millions of other “undesirables” were murdered in Hitler’s death camps. This horror was fully revealed in the Nuremburg Trials, which tried twenty-four Nazis for “crimes against humanity.” Twelve of them were sentenced to death. This was the first international trial for crimes against humanity.

Section 4: The War in the Pacific

Main Ideas

  • The battles of Midway and Guadalcanal turned the tide of the war against the Japanese in the Pacific.
  • The fighting in the Pacific was fierce. Because of Japan’s reluctance to surrender even in the face of certain death, both sides experienced unusually heavy casualties.
  • The dropping of the atomic bomb ended the war.

Summary and Analysis
During the early years of the war in the Pacific, the Japanese were on the offense as they took Hong Kong, Singapore, the Dutch West Indies, and drove the Americans out of the Philippines. Upon leaving the Philippines in 1942, General Douglas MacArthur uttered the famous words, “I shall return.”

Allied fighters received a moral boost from Colonel James Doolittle’s bombing raid on Tokyo, which shocked Japan. Soon the Allied forces turned the tide of the war with a great victory at the Battle of Midway. The island of Midway was vital to the defense of Hawaii, so Admiral Chester Nimitz used all his resources to defend it against the Japanese, destroying four Japanese carriers and 250 airplanes. It was a devastating loss for the Japanese navy. MacArthur made good on his promise and returned to the Philippines in 1944, liberating the islands after a year of fierce fighting with heavy casualties. A victory at the Battle of Guadalcanal and later victories at Iwo Jima and Okinawa placed American troops in the position to invade Japan itself. However, these battles had been costly in American lives. Japanese fighters fought fiercely, often refusing to surrender and fighting to the death. American forces suffered 50,000 casualties in the Battle of Okinawa alone.

It was partly because of the large numbers of casualties that President Harry Truman, who had taken office after FDR’s death, decided to use the atom bomb against Japan. The bomb had been developed by the Manhattan Project, created by FDR when he learned that the Germans were working on powerful weapon by splitting the atom. On July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb was tested in New Mexico. On August 6th, a single plane, the Enola Gay, dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Nearly all of the city’s buildings were damaged or destroyed. The city center and its inhabitants were vaporized in an instant. Thousands upon thousands died from the attack or of radiation sickness afterward. A second bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki on August 9th. On August 14th, Japan surrendered unconditionally. The war was finally over.

Section 5: The Social Impact of the War

Main Ideas

  • The war brought about new opportunities for women, African Americans, and other ethnic minorities.
  • The war also brought discrimination, internment, and financial ruin to many Americans of Japanese descent.

Summary and Analysis
The great need for workers as the country mobilized for war brought new opportunities to African Americans who pushed for economic equality. In 1941, FDR created the Fair Employment Practices Committee to hear grievances of minorities in the defense industries and the government. African-American soldiers also served in the war, but although they could die as well as whites, they still could not eat at restaurants with whites. The founding of the Congress of Racial Equality gave African Americans an organization that began to use nonviolent techniques such as sit-ins to end racism. Other minorities such as Mexicans and Native Americans also benefited from the war mobilization. Navajo Code Talkers developed an unbreakable code for the armed forces, and the Mexican Bracero program allowed Mexican farm laborers to work in the United States, greatly expanding the populations of Los Angeles and other Californian cities.

Women also had increased opportunities to work in nontraditional industrial positions during the war. Many women took jobs in industry despite wages that were less than men’s wages. After the war, some of these women returned home willingly, but others really wanted to maintain their jobs.

Japanese Americans suffered greatly during the war. Racial prejudice increased significantly after Pearl Harbor. In February 1942, the War Relocation Authority was formed to remove everyone of Japanese ancestry from the California coast. They were interned in camps for the duration of the war, and most lost their businesses, homes, and other valuable assets. Still more than 17,000 Japanese Americans served in World War II. In 1988, Congress admitted its error in the interment and awarded $20,000 to surviving internees. The U.S. government also officially apologized to Japanese Americans.

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