Strongsville City Schools / Overview



Section 1 - IntroductionClick to read captionThe Great Depression in the United States led to a worldwide depression.?This depression and the effects of World War I had left the German economy in tatters.?In the 1930s, a German dictator, Adolf Hitler, took advantage of Germany’s troubles to stir up German nationalism.?He rearmed the country, violating the Treaty of Versailles, and began to threaten his neighbors.In 1936, German troops occupied the Rhineland, a German region on the border with France.?Although the Versailles Treaty banned military activities in this region, the League of Nations did nothing in response.?Two years later, Hitler demanded that the Sudetenland, a German-speaking region of Czechoslovakia, be turned over to Germany.?At this point, many Europeans feared that Hitler was pushing Europe toward war.Click to read captionFrance and Great Britain still bore the scars of World War I and would go to great lengths to prevent another conflict.?In September 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew to Germany to talk with Hitler.?At the meeting, Chamberlain asked Hitler if he would be satisfied with the Sudetenland and leave the rest of Czechoslovakia alone.?Hitler convinced Chamberlain that his aims were peaceful and that he had no desire to control other countries.France and Britain distrusted Hitler.?Yet they had already decided on a policy of?appeasement—yielding to an enemy’s demands in order to maintain peace.?Germany would get the Sudetenland, despite Czechoslovakia’s objections.?Chamberlain told the British people that it did not make sense to go to war over such a small territory.?“If we have to fight, it must be on larger issues than that,” he said.?Chamberlain and Hitler then worked out the details of what became known as the?Munich Pact.?Together with the leaders of France and Italy, they signed the agreement in Munich, Germany, on September 29, 1938.?Chamberlain flew home with doubts about the pact.?But he also had hope.Section 2 - Dictators and Militarists Rise to PowerHitler’s violation of the Treaty of Versailles boosted his popularity in Germany.?Germans hated paying war reparations, as the treaty required.?They also objected to the war-guilt clause, which blamed them for World War I.?The nationalistic feelings aroused by the treaty allowed Hitler to seize control and turn Germany into a dictatorship.?Nationalism also helped strong leaders take power in Italy and Japan.?In the Soviet Union, however, dictatorship emerged from a different source—communism.Click to read captionStalin Creates a Totalitarian Dictatorship in the Soviet Union?In 1917, the Russian Revolution overthrew Czar Nicholas II.?Soon afterward, the Communist Party, led by Vladimir Lenin, established itself as the sole authority in the country.?In 1922, the communists formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union.?After Lenin’s death in 1924, Joseph Stalin plotted his way to power.?By the early 1930s, Stalin had established a totalitarian dictatorship.?Totalitarianismis a system in which the government totally controls all aspects of a society, including the economy.Stalin set two main economic goals for the Soviet Union.?He wanted to raise agricultural production and to modernize industry.?The two goals were linked, in that increased exports of food would bring in cash to finance industrialization.In 1928, Stalin established a Five-Year Plan to reach his goals.?This plan called for taking private land from farmers and forcing them to move onto huge collective farms.?Many farmers did not want to resettle on these cooperative, state-owned farms.?But those who resisted were shot or forced to do hard labor in prisonlike concentration camps.?Millions of others died in the famine that followed the shift to collective farms.?Stalin could have diverted food to starving farmers, but instead he sold it abroad to earn cash.The industrial part of Stalin’s plan was a success.?By the early 1930s, modernized factories were churning out machinery, iron and steel, and consumer goods.Stalin also used brutal methods to strengthen his control of the Communist Party.?In 1934, he started to purge party officials by having them arrested, put on trial, and executed.?By 1936, the Soviet secret police were rounding up and killing enormous numbers of party leaders, military officers, industrial managers, and others.This Great Purge, which claimed millions of lives, ensured that remaining officials would be loyal to Stalin.Click to read captionMussolini Establishes a Fascist Dictatorship in Italy?Serious problems plagued Italy after the First World War.?Inflation and labor strikes hurt the Italian economy, and communists threatened to take over the democratic government.?In addition, Italians felt insulted by the Versailles Treaty, because its grant of territory to Italy fell far short of their expectations.?Benito Mussolini, a veteran of the war, took advantage of conditions in Italy to emerge as a national figure and eventually form a dictatorship.In 1919, Mussolini founded the first fascist political movement.?Fascism?is based on an extreme nationalism in which the state comes first and individual liberty is secondary.?Fascists are strongly opposed to communism and democracy.?They favor military values, the use of violence, and a leader who is strong and ruthless.?One fascist slogan in Italy called on youth to “believe, obey, fight.” Another claimed, “A minute on the battlefield is worth a lifetime of peace.” Fascism often arises during a time of crisis, promising to revive an earlier era of glory.?In Italy’s case, that era was ancient Rome.Mussolini used his extraordinary skill at public speaking to promote fascism.?He did not speak with the calm, soothing voice of Franklin Roosevelt in a fireside chat.Instead, Mussolini agitated crowds with emotional outbursts and dramatic gestures.?At these rallies, tough young men wearing black shirts provided security.?These supporters also formed violent Blackshirt squads that broke up political meetings and labor strikes, assaulted socialists and communists, and terrorized local populations.By 1922, fascists dominated several areas of Italy, and Mussolini prepared to take control of the whole country.?In October, he and thousands of Blackshirts threatened to march on Rome.?Influential business and army leaders persuaded Italy’s king, Emmanuel III, that Mussolini might be able to solve the nation’s problems.?The king asked Mussolini to form a government.?As prime minister, Mussolini quickly took charge, taking the name?Il Duce,?Italian for “the leader.” Within a few years, he turned Italy into a fascist dictatorship.?He banned labor unions, outlawed opposing political parties, and censored the press.?He also employed spies and secret police to keep an eye on the people.Mussolini wanted to build Italy’s economy, and his industrial development and public works programs had some success.?He also hoped to turn Italy into a great European power, using the Roman Empire as a model.?Like the ancient Romans, he sought glory through military conquest.Click to read captionHitler Leads the Rise of Nazism in Germany?Like Italy, Germany also turned to fascism after World War I.?In 1919, Adolf Hitler—Germany’s future leader—joined a small political party that later became known as the Nazi Party.?Under his leadership, this party would direct a mass movement based on a form of fascism known as?Nazism.?Nazis believed that Germans and other Nordic peoples—Hitler called them Aryans—were physically and morally superior to other races.?Nazis wanted to purify Germany by removing other races, especially Jews.Hitler laid out the Nazi philosophy in his book?Mein Kampf,?or “My Struggle.”?He started the book in 1924, while spending a year in prison for trying to overthrow the government of the German state of Bavaria.?In?Mein Kampf,?Hitler said that the superior Aryan race was locked in a struggle with other races.?He introduced the idea of?Lebensraum,?or “living space,” declaring that Germany needed land on which Aryan settlers could raise large families.?Those families, in turn, would conquer more territory, expanding the German empire.?Eventually, Germany and the Aryan race would rule the world.Click to read captionGermany’s economic depression gave Hitler the opportunity to spread his ideas.?The country’s parliamentary government could not cope with the crisis.?Hungry, unemployed Germans began looking for a leader who could save the nation from ruin.?Hitler addressed large crowds, blaming the Jews for nearly every German problem, from the world war to the depression.?He promised to restore Germany’s economy and empire.?At these Nazi rallies, bodyguards protected Hitler.Hitler’s extreme nationalism appealed to many voters.?In the 1932 elections, the Nazi Party won more seats in the parliament than any other political party in Germany.?As a result, Hitler was named chancellor, or prime minister.?He moved quickly to dissolve the republic, replacing German democracy with a totalitarian government.The Nazis called this government the Third Reich—the successor to two earlier German empires.?They passed new laws targeting Jews, barring them from certain jobs and exposing them to persecution.?Jews and other “undesirables” were shipped off to concentration camps.?Hitler also centralized the government, placing Nazis in the main positions of authority.?In 1934, he became both president and chancellor, giving himself the title?der Führer,?or “the leader.” Hitler now had complete command of Germany.?He set about building Germany’s military into a powerful war machine.The Military Takes Control of the Government in Japan?Like Germany, Japan had a mixed history of military rule and democracy.?Before World War I, Japan had begun to industrialize.?Lacking raw materials for industry, it relied on a strong military to obtain natural resources from other countries.?After the war, however, Japan became less aggressive.?It helped form the League of Nations in 1920.?It also signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, joining 14 other nations in a pledge to resolve disagreements peacefully.?Civilians gained more power in the government, although Japan’s emperor continued to play a strong role.Click to read captionIn the 1930s, however, the worldwide economic depression undermined civilian rule and caused Japan to move toward a policy ofmilitarism.?The Japanese military began to increase its power and to play a greater role in politics.Japan’s growing militarism was combined with an extreme form of nationalism.?Many Japanese turned away from Western influences and embraced traditional values and culture.?Radical nationalists also called for more aggressive military action abroad to acquire territory and raw materials.?Like Hitler, they wanted to expand Japan’s “living space” and acquire oil and other vital resources.Some nationalists joined with a group of army officers in efforts to overthrow the civilian government.?In 1932, they assassinated the prime minister.?More assassinations and upheaval followed in 1936.?The government put down these rebellions and executed the rebels.?Nevertheless, civilian politicians, fearing for their lives, gave up more power to the military.Japanese militarism got another boost in 1941, when General Hideki Tojo became prime minister, replacing a civilian leader.?Tojo, an aggressive militarist, continued to develop the military and prepare the nation for war.Section 3 - Military Aggression Meets a Weak ResponseDuring the early 1930s, Americans still strongly favored isolationism.?With the bitter memory of the first world war and the challenge of economic problems at home, they did not want the nation to become entangled in another war.?For this reason, President Franklin Roosevelt took no direct action against aggressive dictators in Asia and Europe.?He did, however, speak out against aggression in principle.?In his 1933 inaugural address, Roosevelt vowed that the United States would be a “good neighbor” who “respects the rights of others.” This pledge was meant to send a message to aggressor nations.?But it also reflected his desire to end U.S. intervention in Latin America and improve relations with that region.At a conference later in the year, 21 nations in the Western Hemisphere signed on to Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor Policy.” They declared, “No state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another.” Over the next few years, the United States would encourage Japan, Germany, and Italy to abide by this principle, but it still would not back up its words with action.Click to read captionMilitarists Expand Japan’s Empire?One of the first examples of blatant aggression came in 1931, when Japan seized a portion of China.?Japan and other imperialist powers had previously established spheres of influence in China, where they exploited the country’s land and resources.?Japan’s sphere of influence was Manchuria, a region in northeastern China.?When China’s nationalist government threatened to expel foreign powers, the Japanese army invaded Manchuria and took control of the region.The takeover of Manchuria had several major consequences.?It gave Japan a large piece of territory that was rich in resources.?In addition, it began an era in which the military dominated the Japanese government.?It also isolated Japan from most other nations.?In 1932, the League of Nations ordered Japan to withdraw its army from the region.?Japan refused, choosing to withdraw from the League instead.Click to read captionMore aggression followed in 1937.?In July, the Japanese army clashed with Chinese forces outside Beijing, China’s capital.?The clash soon became a full-fledged war.?The Chinese army pulled back, but the Japanese caught up with them at the city of Nanjing.?After capturing the city, Japanese soldiers went on a six-week rampage known as the Rape of Nanjing.?They massacred as many as 300,000 Chinese civilians and brutally raped about 20,000 Chinese women.?The war did not stop there.?By the end of the year, Japan’s military occupied China’s main cities and much of its fertile land.Jolted by Japan’s aggression, Roosevelt called on “peace-loving nations” to end the “epidemic of world lawlessness.” He spoke of the need to quarantine aggressor nations.?In international relations, a quarantine is a blockade or boycott.?Roosevelt’s “quarantine” speech did nothing to stop Japan.?By 1941, Japan had added French Indochina to its Asian empire to go along with Formosa (now called Taiwan), Korea, large areas of China, and several small Pacific islands.Europe’s Dictators Test the League of Nations?Japan’s aggression tested the League of Nations.?The League was intended to serve as an instrument of international law.?In theory, it could impose boycotts and other economic sanctions or use the combined military force of its members to keep unruly nations in line.In practice, however, it was a weak organization, partly because the United States was not a member.?The League failed to respond effectively to Japan’s challenge .Throughout the 1930s, Germany and Italy would also test the League’s will.Click to read captionLike Japan, Germany pulled out of the League of Nations in 1933.?At the same time,?Hitler began rebuilding the German military.?In 1935, he announced the formation of an air force and the start of compulsory military service.?Both actions went against the Treaty of Versailles.?The League of Nations lodged a formal protest, but it refused to consider sanctions against Germany.?The next year, Hitler openly challenged France by sending troops into the Rhineland.?This was another test of the League’s resolve to stand up to aggression.Meanwhile, Mussolini began his quest to build a New Roman Empire.?In October 1935, the Italian army invaded the African nation of Ethiopia.?The poorly equipped Ethiopian forces could not stop the invaders.?Ethiopia appealed to the League of Nations, which voted to impose economic sanctions on the aggressor.?The sanctions were mild, and few League members seriously applied them.?In May 1936, Italy officially annexed Ethiopia.?Hitler heartily approved of the invasion.?In October, he and Mussolini joined in a treaty of friendship that forged an alliance, known as the Rome–Berlin axis, between their countries.Events in Spain also aided the growth of fascism.?In July 1936, a military rebellion started theSpanish Civil War.?Led by General Francisco Franco, the Spanish military and its right-wing allies, known as the Nationalists, sought to overthrow Spain’s democratic republic.?Italy and Germany backed the rebels with supplies, weapons, and troops.?Various left-wing groups, known as the Republicans, battled to save the republic, with aid from the Soviet Union and volunteer fighters from other countries.?Although some 3,000 Americans volunteered, the U.S. government stayed out of the conflict.?At least half a million people died in the three-year war.?In the end, Franco and the Nationalists won and established a right-wing dictatorship.Click to read captionGreat Britain and France Seek to Appease Hitler?Encouraged by events in Italy and Spain, and by his own successful occupation of the Rhineland, Hitler continued his campaign of expansion.?During this time, Britain and France did little to stop him, choosing instead to follow a policy of appeasement.Hitler next set his sights on neighboring Austria, the country of his birth.?At the time, Austria had an unstable government with fascist elements.?Hitler pressured its leaders to join the Third Reich.Finally, in 1938, a member of the Austrian Nazi Party took over as chancellor of Austria.?On March 12 of that year, Hitler’s army crossed the border into Austria without opposition.?The following day he proclaimed?Anschluss,?or “political union,” with Austria.?Britain and France remained passive spectators to this German expansion.Hitler next wanted to take over Czechoslovakia.?By signing the Munich Pact in September 1938, he acquired the Czech region of the Sudetenland.?Hitler told Chamberlain that this would be his “last territorial demand.” Chamberlain chose to believe Hitler, declaring that he had achieved “peace with honor” and adding, “I believe it is peace in our time.” Another member of Parliament, Winston Churchill, disagreed.?He wrote, “By this time next year we shall know whether the policy of appeasement has appeased, or whether it has only stimulated a more ferocious appetite.”The U.S. Congress Legislates Neutrality?During this period, the United States did little to thwart aggression.?When Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, for example, the League of Nations considered establishing an oil embargo, or suspension of trade, against Italy.?Italy’s offensive would grind to a halt without oil.?The League asked the United States, a major oil supplier, if it would join the embargo.?Roosevelt said no, pointing out that he had just signed the Neutrality Act of 1935.?This act prevented the United States from supplying “arms, ammunition, or implements of war” to nations in conflict.?Because the law said nothing about oil, Roosevelt chose not to block oil shipments to Italy.Congress passed additional?neutrality acts?in 1936 and 1937, all designed to keep the country out of conflicts brewing in Europe, such as the Spanish Civil War.Americans passionately supported this isolationism.?Like Europeans, they recalled the horrors of World War I and wanted to avoid getting drawn into a new conflict.Roosevelt did, however, devote enormous energy to preserving peace.?He wrote letters to the aggressors and to League members, urging them to settle their differences through negotiation.Section 4 - Hitler Plunges Europe into WarClick to read captionGreat Britain and France chose to avoid war with Germany by allowing Hitler to behave as he pleased.?But Hitler had no interest in avoiding war and grew bolder with every aggressive step he took.?In March 1939, he broke the Munich Pact by invading Czechoslovakia and seizing control of Prague, the Czech capital.?As Churchill suspected, appeasement only made Hitler more eager to conquer new territory.?The takeover of Czechoslovakia finally caused Britain and France to draw a line in the sand.?They declared that if Germany made any further attacks on small states, then they would declare war.Hitler Signs a Nonaggression Pact with Stalin?Part of Hitler’s plans for war involved Stalin, the communist leader of the Soviet Union.?Communists and Nazis despised each other and had little reason to cooperate.?Yet Hitler sought an agreement with Stalin to keep the Soviet Union neutral in the coming war.?Hitler offered Stalin a nonaggression treaty, and Stalin accepted it.The German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, signed in August 1939, served the interests of both leaders.?Hitler planned to attack Poland, an action that was likely to ignite a broader war in Europe.The geography of that war concerned him.?The Soviet Union lay to the east.?Britain and France lay to the west.?Hitler could not afford to fight a war on two fronts, east and west, at the same time.?For that reason, Soviet neutrality was vital.?The pact helped Stalin, too.?The Soviet dictator wanted more power and secure borders.?As part of the pact, Hitler secretly promised to give Stalin part of Poland and grant him a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.But Hitler already had plans to attack the Soviet Union, which had vast, fertile farmlands that were a key to fulfilling the quest for?Lebensraum.?Hitler also understood that Nazi Germany could not coexist for long with the communist USSR to its east.German Armies Roll Across Europe?With the Soviet Union neutralized, Hitler sprang into action.On September 1, 1939, the German army marched east into Poland.?Two days later, France and Britain—the Allied powers—declared war on Germany.?World War II had begun.In Poland, the German armed forces relied on a strategy of?blitzkrieg, or “lightning war.”?Without any warning, German bombers launched attacks on railroads, airfields, communications networks, military bases, and other strategic sites.?These attacks helped prevent Polish?mobilization, the assembling of troops and equipment for war.?Meanwhile, waves of infantry, supported by tanks and artillery, pushed toward key cities.?Germany’s method was to outflank, surround, and destroy.Motorized units quickly swept around and encircled the Polish army.?Warplanes rained bombs and bullets on the enemy.?Then the foot soldiers moved in to finish the job.Ill-equipped and overwhelmed, the Polish forces quickly collapsed.?On September 17, the Soviet army invaded Poland from the east.?By the first of October, Germany and the USSR had complete control of the country.Hitler now switched his focus to the west.?He moved soldiers to Germany’s border with France and the Low Countries—Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.France relied for its main defense on the Maginot Line, a string of heavily armed fortresses along the German border.?Most French troops massed here, while others gathered along the border with Belgium.?British forces crossed the English Channel, prepared to aid France and the Low Countries.?For the next few months, not much happened on the western front.?American newspapers began referring to this as the “Phony War.”Click to read captionThen suddenly, in a series of lightning actions, the Germans struck.?In April 1940, they launched a surprise attack on Denmark and Norway.?Within a few weeks, Germany had conquered these two Scandinavian countries.?Next, on May 10, the Germans invaded the Low Countries.?In just 18 days, these three countries would fall into German hands.Using blitzkrieg tactics, the main German force burst through Luxembourg and southern Belgium into France in just four days.?Then it began a dramatic drive toward the French coast.?Skirting the Maginot Line, the Germans sped westward, encircling defenders.?Hundreds of thousands of French and British troops found themselves trapped in a shrinking pocket of French countryside.?They retreated toward the port of Dunkirk on the northwest coast of France.?Britain sent every boat it could find across the English Channel to evacuate the soldiers.?The daring rescue saved some 338,000 men.Meanwhile, Paris was about to fall to the Germans.?Mussolini took this opportunity to declare war on Britain and France.?Italy and Germany became known as the Axis powers.?On June 22, France surrendered to Germany.?Under the terms of the armistice, Germany would occupy three fifths of the country.?The southeast would become a?puppet government?known as Vichy France.?A puppet government is one that is run by citizens of a conquered country who carry out the policies of the conqueror.Click to read captionBritain Fights on Alone?Britain, now led by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, stood alone against the Axis powers.?After the evacuation from Dunkirk, Churchill had vowed to fight Germany and defend Britain with every resource at his disposal.?In a speech to Parliament, he declared,We shall not flag [tire] nor fail.?We shall go on to the end.?We shall fight .?.?.?on the seas and oceans; we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air.?We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on the beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills.?We shall never surrender.—Speech before the House of Commons, June 4, 1940Hitler wanted to conquer Britain, but he knew that the large and powerful British navy could keep his army from crossing the English Channel.?To defeat that navy, he had to establish dominance in the air.?He set up air bases in conquered lands from France to Norway and moved in some 2,800 bombers and fighter planes.German planes flew raids throughout the summer of 1940 and into the fall.?They attacked British ships, ports, airfields, radar stations, and industrial centers.?To counter this onslaught, the British sent up the fighter pilots of the Royal Air Force (RAF) in an engagement known as the Battle of Britain.?The RAF pilots, flying their Spitfires and Hurricanes, proved effective against the German air campaign.?By late August, they had downed more than 600 German aircraft, at a cost of 260 British planes.In September 1940, Britain launched its first bombing raid on Berlin.?Germany shifted its targets to British cities.?For the next several months, bombing attacks devastated sections of London and other large cities.?Londoners called this campaign the Blitz, a shortening of blitzkrieg.?By the spring of 1941, the number of raids dwindled.?The British had successfully defended their homeland.?That victory gave the Allies reason to believe that Hitler could be stopped.Section 5 - The United States Enters World War IIAfter war broke out in Europe, isolationism lost some of its appeal for Americans.?Most now openly supported the Allies.?Hoping to keep the United States out of the war, Hitler sought to expand his alliance.?In September 1940, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact, making Japan a member of the Axis powers.?The three nations agreed to provide mutual support in the event of an attack by a country not yet in the war.?The attacker they had in mind was the United States.?If the United States entered the war, it would have to fight on two fronts—Asia and Europe.?Hitler hoped that the threat of a two-front war would ensure American neutrality for a while longer.Roosevelt Inches Away from Neutrality?The start of war put the United States in a risky position.?Americans feared getting drawn into the fighting, but they wanted to help the Allies.?France and Great Britain needed weapons.?Yet the neutrality acts banned the sale of arms to belligerent nations.?In November 1939, Roosevelt pushed a bill through Congress that repealed the arms embargo.?This Neutrality Act of 1939 included a “cash-and-carry” provision.?Nations had to pay cash for materials and carry them away in their own ships.After the fall of France, the United States finally began rearming itself in earnest.?In September 1940, Congress enacted the first peacetime military draft in U.S. history.?A month later, the Selective Training and Service Act had enrolled 16 million men.?Yet during the 1940 election campaign, Roosevelt assured Americans, “Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” In November, he won an unprecedented third term as president.In December 1940, the Battle of Britain was raging.?Churchill declared that his country was nearly bankrupt.?Roosevelt was determined to provide Britain “all aid short of war” and urged Congress to adopt a plan to lend, not sell, arms to Britain.?This legislation, the?Lend-Lease Act, passed in March 1941, but only after heated public and congressional debate.Click to read captionIn June 1941, Hitler broke the Nonaggression Pact by attacking the Soviet Union.?Great Britain announced its support for the USSR, and the United States began sending supplies to the besieged country under the Lend-Lease Act.In August, Churchill and Roosevelt met in secret aboard a warship in Canadian waters of the North Atlantic.?There they prepared a declaration of common principles known as the Atlantic Charter.They promised not to use the war to expand their own territory, and they asserted the right of all peoples to self-government.?Three months later, Congress voted to allow American merchant ships to arm themselves and sail to Britain.Japan Attacks the United States?From 1940 to 1941, Japan continued seeking raw materials through conquest.?It occupied French Indochina, in Southeast Asia, and set its sights on the Dutch East Indies.?Its goal was to push Western powers out and establish a “new order in East Asia,” with Japan at the center.?The United States tried to undercut Japan’s aggression in several ways.?It sent loans and other aid to Japan’s enemy, China, and froze Japanese assets in American banks.?It also blocked the export of vital resources, including oil, to Japan.Relations between the two nations steadily worsened.Click to read captionBy 1941, American intelligence officers had managed to intercept and decode secret messages from Japan to its foreign offices.Late in the year, officers learned of a coming attack on American territory in the Pacific Ocean.?They thought the attack might target an American base in the Philippines.?Instead it was aimed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii—the home of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.On December 7, 1941, Japanese aircraft carriers approached Hawaii.?From the carriers, more than 300 bombers and fighter planes launched the attack on Pearl Harbor.?In a little more than two hours, the Japanese sank or damaged 18 American ships.?At nearby airfields, Japanese warplanes damaged or destroyed about 300 military aircraft.?In all, the raid left more than 2,400 Americans dead and nearly 1,200 wounded.?The Japanese lost just 29 planes in the attack.The next day, Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan.?“Hostilities exist,” he said.?“Our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.”?Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.?Americans began to prepare for a conflict that would test the nation’s strength and courage.. IntroductionClick to read captionAfter the shock of the Pearl Harbor attack, many Americans wondered what would happen next. Would waves of Japanese bombers attack the West Coast? For months, rumors of an enemy invasion haunted the region. In time, the fears faded, but coastal communities remained wary.Click to read captionAs it turned out, the United States was not immediately endangered by an enemy invasion. Yet, as President Franklin Roosevelt warned, the threat was real. If the Allies failed to stop the Axis powers, then one day Americans could personally experience the horrors of war in their own land.Roosevelt knew the war effort would require the enthusiastic backing of the American people in order to succeed.?Millions of Americans would be needed to serve in the armed forces. Many others would help on the home front by working to expand the output of war materials. Everyone would have to make sacrifices in support of the armed forces.?They would have to accept?rationing—a system for limiting the distribution of food, gasoline, and other goods—so the military could have the weapons, equipment, and supplies it needed.?As a result, life in the United States would change dramatically.These changes were evident in many ways, even in clothing styles.?The armed forces needed fabric for uniforms. In March 1942, the government announced rules aimed at saving more than 40 million pounds of wool a year. Men’s suits could no longer be sold with a vest or an extra pair of pants. Cuffs were eliminated, as were patch pockets and wide lapels. The new rules also restricted the type and amount of fabric in women’s clothes. Designers cooperated by using more synthetics, such as rayon, and by making skirts shorter and dresses simpler.During the war, the entire country would endure hardships, many extending far beyond being forced to wear plainer clothes. Yet the war would also offer new opportunities to countless Americans.2.?Organizing the American Economy for WarClick to read captionThe job of organizing the wartime economy fell to the?War Production Board?(WPB).?The WPB sought to meet Roosevelt’s goal of making the United States the “arsenal of democracy.”?As with the War Industries Board of World War I, the WPB’s main task was to manage the conversion of industries to military production.?Some of these makeovers seemed natural.?Automobile manufacturers, for example, switched from making car engines to making airplane and tank engines.?Other conversions called for more dramatic changes.?For example, a soft drink company might retool its machinery and retrain its workers to pack artillery shells with explosives.?A maker of model trains would begin producing bomb fuses.?All across the country, businesses mobilized their resources to serve the needs of the military.A Wartime Production Boom Ends the Depression?The huge demand for military supplies revived the economy.?Businesses expanded and hired more workers.?Farmers prospered as crop prices and farm incomes rose.?The Depression ended, and a period of vigorous economic growth began.As the economy moved into high gear, the?gross domestic product?(GDP) rose rapidly.?GDP is the total value of goods and services produced in a country in a year.?From 1940 to 1944, this basic measure of national output increased by 116 percent.During the same four years, the total personal income of American workers rose by more than 110 percent.?Business income grew even faster, increasing by nearly 130 percent.During the New Deal, the government had taken an active role in stimulating the economy.?To meet wartime needs, it expanded that role.?The WPB successfully mobilized businesses behind the war effort, leading to closer relationships between the government and large corporations.?As also happened during World War I, a National War Labor Board (NWLB) was set up to mobilize labor.The main task of the NWLB was to settle labor disputes before they disrupted the production of war goods.?Immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, union leaders agreed to a no-strike pledge.?Eight months later, the NWLB imposed limits on wage increases.?The wage limits and no-strike pledge left labor leaders with very little bargaining power.?In exchange, the NWLB guaranteed unions that all new employees at companies with union contracts would automatically become union members.?This policy boosted union membership.Financing the War Effort with Taxes and Bonds?During the war, government spending rose to new levels.?More than $175 billion worth of defense contracts went out to businesses from 1940 to 1944.?The government met these costs the same way it had during World War I—through taxes and borrowing.Taxes provided about 45 percent of the revenue needed to pay for the war.?The Revenue Act of 1942 increased individual and corporate income tax rates and more than tripled the number of individuals required to pay income tax.?To make tax collection easier, Congress devised a system of withholding.?Employers held back a certain amount from every paycheck and sent it directly to the government.?This system of payroll taxes is still in place today.Click to read captionBorrowing provided much of the rest of the money to finance the war.?The government borrowed from banks and other financial institutions.?It also borrowed from the American people through the sale of war savings bonds.?As during World War I, war bonds not only provided the government with cash but also gave people a way to show their support for the war effort.?Government agencies and private companies once again produced advertisements urging Americans to buy war bonds.?Campaigns to sell bonds involved a variety of Americans, from schoolchildren to glamorous ernment Attempts to Curb Inflation and Consumption?Inflation became a serious problem during the war.?Americans had money to spend, but the focus on military production meant that few consumer goods were available.?In a fireside chat, Roosevelt explained the supply-and-demand problem:?“You do not have to be a professor of mathematics or economics to see that if people with plenty of cash start bidding against each other for scarce goods, the price of those goods goes up.”Congress gave the job of curbing inflation to the Office of Price Administration.?The OPA instituted?price controls—a system of legal restrictions on the prices charged for goods.?These controls seemed to work.?From 1940 to 1945, consumer prices rose only 35 percent, instead of doubling or tripling as some officials had feared.The OPA also rationed about 20 basic consumer products, including gasoline, tires, sugar, meats, and processed foods.?Each month, consumers received books of coupons that they turned in to the grocer when they bought rationed foods.?When they ran out of coupons, they could buy no more until they received a new book the next month.?Drivers used a different ration book to purchase gasoline.?Americans grumbled about rationing, but most complied.?This program succeeded in reducing the overconsumption of scarce goods and ensured that everyone would have fairly equal access to those goods.Americans also aided the war effort in other ways.?They formed car pools or rode bicycles to work.?They recycled metals, paper, rubber, and other materials.?One old shovel, Americans were told, contained enough iron to make four hand grenades.?Children collected much of the scrap material.?They also peeled the foil off cigarette packages and gum wrappers and rolled them into balls for recycling.?Families also planted victory gardens to grow food.?In 1943, more than 20 million gardens yielded one third of all the vegetables eaten in the country that year.?Victory gardens and recycling campaigns not only boosted war production but also raised the morale of Americans on the home front.?People understood they were making an important contribution to the war effort.3.?American GIs Go to WarClick to read captionMany young Americans left the comforts of home to join the military.?While they were in the service, the government provided all of their food and supplies.?Those items were often labeled “government issue,” or GI.?Soldiers had GI soap, GI socks, a GI helmet, and a GI rifle.?For that reason, they began referring to themselves as GI soldiers, or simply?GIs.?The name stuck, and fighting men in all the armed forces used it proudly.Assembling a Fighting Force?In 1940, more than 16 million men between the ages of 21 and 35 had registered for the draft.?Later registrations expanded the age limits to include men from 18 to 44.Most draftees ended up in the army.?By the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, they had swelled the army’s ranks from 300,000 to a fighting force of more than 1.5 million troops.After the attack on Pearl Harbor, volunteers swamped military recruiting stations throughout the nation.?They represented a broad range of American society, from miners and mill workers to professors and politicians.?By the end of the war, nearly 6 million had enlisted, mainly in the navy or the army air corps.For draftees and volunteers alike, the war offered an opportunity to show their patriotism by fighting for their country.?Most willingly packed their bags and boarded buses and trains, not knowing whether they would ever return.?Immigrants and ethnic minorities saw joining the military as an opportunity to show that they were truly Americans.Preparing the Troops to Fight?Draftees and recruits reported first to an army reception center within a huge complex, such as at Fort Dix, New Jersey, or Fort Bragg, North Carolina.?Here they had their first taste of military life.?They slept in barracks with no privacy and traded their civilian clothes for uniforms.?They listened to lectures and submitted to medical exams.?The main goal of the reception center, however, was to determine where each recruit should go for training.?Various aptitude tests helped decide this.After a couple weeks, most new soldiers were sent off to one of the many army training camps scattered across the country.?Most of these young men had little experience with life outside their hometowns.?Suddenly they found themselves thrown into an unfamiliar environment with fellow soldiers from all over the country.One GI from the Midwest recalled, “The first time I ever heard a New England accent was at Fort Benning .?.?.?[and] the southerner was an exotic creature to me.”Click to read captionThe trainers, or drill instructors, had as little as eight weeks to prepare men for combat.?The job of the trainers was to turn soft civilians into rugged fighting men.?Trainees followed a strict routine.They got up at 6 A.M., washed, dressed, ate, and made the long march to the training site by 8 A.M. For the next nine hours or so, they worked at becoming a soldier.Instruction included tent pitching, map reading, guard duty, sanitation, weapons care, and endless physical training.?Later, trainees took part in parachute jumping and live-ammunition exercises, which called for soldiers to crawl through the dirt while real machine gun bullets whizzed above their heads.?They marched back to camp in the evening, exhausted.?One draftee wrote home to his parents in May 1943:?“I don’t know whether I can stand to do what we have to do or not.?I have to try it though.” Near the end of his basic training, he wrote again:?“It was 106 today and when we are out drilling we really do get hot, but I will tell you the truth, I have got so that I can stand it just as good as the next one.?I sweat a lot but I go on like I was cool.” The draftee had become a GI.The GI’s War:?Hardships and Opportunities?Training could only do so much to prepare a GI for combat.?Few were ever truly ready for the intensity of the battlefield.?The deafening blasts of artillery or grenades, the squeal and clatter of tanks on the move, and the billowing clouds of smoke all combined to create a surreal atmosphere.Then there was the fear.?Soldiers knew they could die at any time, especially if they were crossing an open field or storming a beach under heavy enemy fire.?New soldiers, especially, tended to freeze at the first sign of danger—and they saw danger everywhere.Experienced soldiers learned to distinguish the real dangers, such as the sound of an enemy tank or incoming artillery fire, from the din of war.?Yet even battle-hardened veterans often felt a heart-pounding sense of doom in the battle zone, where uncertainty ruled.Between battles, boredom sometimes became the enemy.?Soldiers with free time often felt homesick and lonely.?Many men fought these feelings by writing letters.At night, they would try to put their thoughts and experiences down on paper for girlfriends, wives, or parents.?A letter from home was a major event.Under the stress of war, soldiers developed strong bonds of friendship.?“The reason you storm the beaches is not patriotism or bravery,” one rifleman recalled.?“It’s that sense of not wanting to fail your buddies.”Those who survived the war often found their lives significantly changed.?Many returned physically, mentally, or emotionally wounded by their combat experiences.Amid the horrors of war, though, many gained a greater appreciation for such American ideals as liberty and came home with a new sense of pride in themselves and in their country.4.?The Internment of Japanese AmericansClick to read captionWhen the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred, there were about 150,000 Japanese Americans living in the Hawaiian Islands.?Some people questioned their loyalty, even accusing them of helping plan the surprise attack.?Fearing sabotage, the War Department recommended the mass evacuation of Japanese Americans from Hawaii.?But the American military governor of Hawaii urged everyone to stay calm.?Businesses on the islands opposed evacuation.?They noted that losing so many workers would ruin the islands’ economy.?The press backed this position and worked hard to keep false rumors from circulating.?In the end, nearly all of the Japanese Americans in Hawaii stayed there.Dealing with the Fear of Potential Collaborators?On the mainland, concerns about disloyalty extended to people of German or Italian ancestry.?They were seen as potential collaborators—people who work with an enemy to undermine a nation’s security.Shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack, President Roosevelt signed proclamations declaring all German, Italian, and Japanese nationals, or non-U.S. citizens, to be “enemy aliens.” These orders affected more than 314,000 people of German ancestry, 690,000 people of Italian ancestry, and 47,000 people of Japanese ancestry.All “enemy aliens” had to register with the government and carry special identification cards.?They had to turn in all firearms and cameras, as well as shortwave radios, which might be used to send information to the enemy.?They also needed a travel permit to go more than 5 miles from their ernment officials considered putting all “enemy aliens” into camps.?However, the task of relocating all the German and Italian aliens posed huge problems.?Also, politically influential groups of German Americans and Italian Americans resisted such a measure.?The government did round up several thousand German and Italian aliens and sent them to?internment camps?in the middle of the country.?An internment camp is a center for confining people who have been relocated for reasons of national security.Roosevelt Authorizes the Removal of Japanese Americans?The people of Japanese ancestry, in contrast, were a much smaller group with much less political power.?They faced more racial discrimination than did people of German or Italian ancestry because they were of nonwhite, non-European ancestry.?Their social isolation also worked against them.?They had not assimilated into American culture as well as other immigrant groups had.?They kept largely to themselves, in ethnic communities outside the American mainstream.?In addition, they lived mainly on the West Coast, where fear of a Japanese invasion was strongest.?Unlike in Hawaii, the mainland press whipped up that fear by accusing Japanese Americans of spying or of being more loyal to Japan than to the United States.Click to read captionAll these factors made it easier for the government to act against people of Japanese ancestry.?In February 1942, Roosevelt issued?Executive Order 9066.?This order declared that large military zones could be set up to exclude current residents who were believed to be a threat to security.?In March 1942, the military used this executive order to launch a mass evacuation of people of Japanese ancestry from the Pacific Coast.?Evacuees had just a few weeks to sell their homes and possessions.The order to “move out and stay out” applied not only to Japanese “enemy aliens” but also to Japanese American citizens.?Of the 127,000 people of Japanese ancestry living in the mainland United States, 80,000 were native-born American citizens.?As such, they were entitled to the same constitutional rights as all citizens.?This was the main argument made by a Japanese American named Fred Korematsu, who did not obey the order because it would mean leaving his non-Japanese girlfriend.?After two months, Korematsu was arrested and convicted with remaining in a restricted military area.Korematsu appealed the verdict all the way to the Supreme Court.?In the case?Korematsu vs United States, the Court upheld his conviction on the grounds that a group’s civil rights can be set aside in a time of war.?Three of the nine justices dissented from this opinion, including Justice Robert H. Jackson.?He expressed his fear that “the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting American citizens.”Life in the Internment Camps?More than 100,000 Japanese “enemy aliens” and Japanese American citizens were forced to evacuate.?Families collected their belongings in a few pieces of luggage and left their homes.?First they gathered at assembly centers.?Then, in the summer of 1942, they boarded trains for internment camps scattered throughout the western states.?They had no idea where they were headed.?The typical camp, officially known as a relocation center, was in a desert region far from any town.“No houses were in sight,” one internee recalled.?“No trees or anything green—only scrubby sagebrush and an occasional low cactus, and mostly dry, baked earth.” In this setting, internees endured extreme heat in the summer and cold in the winter.Click to read captionThe camps had been constructed in a hurry.?They consisted of “row after row of barracks,” as one surprised visitor recalled, with “high barbed wire fences” and “machine gun towers all around.” The single-story, wooden barracks contained several one-room apartments.?Each came with cots, blankets, and a bare light bulb.?Here, an entire family tried to make a home.?They shared toilets with others in the barracks and used common bathing and dining facilities.?The crowded conditions meant that sanitation was often a problem.Despite these hardships, most of the internees worked to make camp life more bearable.?They built chairs and tables from scrap lumber.?They grew vegetables.?They set up schools, libraries, hospitals, and newspaper offices.As early as 1942, while the camps were still filling up, the government realized that the threat of a West Coast invasion had passed.?Officials began allowing certain groups of Japanese Americans to leave the camps.?These included about 10,000 farm workers and 4,300 college students.?Starting in 1943, thousands of young men left the camps to join the army.?Most of them served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.?This all-volunteer Japanese American unit became famous for its bravery in battle.?In fact, it earned more medals than any other unit of its size in American history.?In 1944, the government began letting the remaining internees return to the West Coast.?Within the next year, all were free to leave the camps.5.?Women at WarClick to read captionIn early 1942, a popular song called “Rosie the Riveter” captured the spirit of the home front:All the day long,Whether rain or shine,She’s a part of the assembly line.She’s making history,Working for victory,Rosie the Riveter.—“Rosie the Riveter,” by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb, 1942One of the country’s most popular artists, Norman Rockwell, put his own version of Rosie on the cover of a national magazine,?The Saturday Evening Post.?Two films about Rosie followed.?The fictional Rosie the Riveter came to represent all the real women who worked to support the war effort.New Opportunities for Women in the Workforce?The demand for workers skyrocketed during the war, as men left their jobs to serve in the armed forces.?At first, industry hired unemployed men to fill those jobs.?But as war production soared, businesses and the government started recruiting women, using slogans such as, “The more women at work, the sooner we win!”?About 18 million women took jobs outside the home during the war, up from 12 million before the war.Most women continued to work in occupations that were traditionally female, such as service, clerical, and sales work.?Many women, however, took positions held traditionally by men.?They became welders, mechanics, and lumberjacks, as well as lawyers, physicists, and architects.Click to read captionNearly 2 million women worked in shipyards and other heavy industries.?Many toiled as riveters on the thousands of airplanes built during the war.?Riveters operated in pairs.?One woman used a heavy mechanical gun to shoot a rivet through a pair of metal sheets.The other woman stood on the opposite side to buck, or flatten, the rivet.?The rivets held the metal sheets and the plane together.Tough physical labor like this increased women’s self-confidence and independence, as well as their income.?As one riveter explained,“The war years had a tremendous impact on women.?I know for myself it was the first time I had a chance to get out of the kitchen and work in industry and make a few bucks .?.?.?You came out to California, put on your pants, and took your lunch pail to a man’s job .?.?.?This was the beginning of women’s feeling that they could do something more.”—Sybil Lewis, quoted in?The Homefront:?America During World War II,?1984Hardships on the Job and at Home?Not everything about the workplace pleased women, though.?They often faced hostility on the job, especially in male-dominated industries.?African American women faced the added stress of racial hostility.?Another issue was that women’s wages did not increase as much as men’s pay.?In 1942, the NWLB ruled that women should get equal pay for “work of the same quality and quantity.” However, businesses often ignored this rule.?Even labor unions, whose female membership soared during the war, rarely challenged unfair wage rates.During the war, most working women were married and were expected to keep up with their family responsibilities.?Many husbands had gone off to war.?As a result, women often faced the hardship of working a “double shift.” They spent a full day at the plant or office and another full day cooking, cleaning, and performing other domestic duties.By the end of the war, the typical working woman was over the age of 35.?Relatively few of these women had young children at home.?Those who did usually arranged for their children to stay with relatives or friends during the day.?But older children were often left to fend for themselves.?As a result, rates of juvenile delinquency and school truancy increased.?Many teenage boys dropped out of school, lured by high-paying war-production jobs.New Opportunities for Women in the Military?Soon after the war started, military leaders realized that women could do much of the clerical and secretarial work done by male soldiers, freeing up the men for combat duty.?Congress agreed.?In 1942, it passed legislation creating a civilian support unit for the army known as the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.On the first day of registration, more than 13,000 women volunteered to serve in this unit.?The following year, the unit was granted military status and was renamed the?Women’s Army Corps?(WAC).?Women in the WAC became members of the military and underwent rigorous army training.?“If the guys can take it,” one volunteer remarked, “so can I.”In 1942, the navy and the coast guard also established their own branches for women.?Navy women were called WAVES and coast guard women were SPARs.Women in all the armed forces quickly moved beyond clerical work into jobs such as truck driver, mechanic, radio operator, air traffic controller, and parachute rigger.A select few became pilots, mainly to ferry aircraft from factories to bases.?Only WACs, however, served on the battlefield, working behind the lines in various support roles, including nursing.?More than 200 American women died overseas as a result of enemy action.6.?African Americans Fight for Two VictoriesThe United States was fighting in the name of democracy against Nazi Germany, which embraced an extreme form of racism based on the idea of Aryan supremacy.Yet racism was still a powerful force in American society.?No one was more keenly aware of this contradiction than African Americans.?After all, their participation in World War I had not helped their struggle against racism at home.?As one black newspaper, the?Chicago Defender,?asked, “Why die for democracy for some foreign country when we don’t even have it here?”Other black leaders called for a battle against racism on two fronts.?They wanted all citizens to join in the fight for a “double victory”—a victory for democracy both at home and abroad.?Double V campaign?forced many white Americans to rethink their attitudes toward black Americans.Click to read captionConfronting Segregation in the Military?With the establishment of the draft in 1940, thousands of African Americans lined up to join the armed forces.?By war’s end, more than a million had served.They faced many hardships, beginning with their segregation in training camp.?They ate in separate mess halls from the white troops and slept in separate barracks.?Camps that had a single movie theater even made black trainees sit together in the last row.In the early buildup to war, the marines and army air corps refused to take any African Americans.The navy limited African American duties to cooking, cleaning rooms, and shining shoes.?One such “mess man” aboard the USS?Philadelphia?sent a letter to a newspaper hoping to discourage other black men from joining the navy.?“All they would become,” he wrote, “is seagoing bellhops, chambermaids, and dishwashers.” The army accepted black GIs, but it excluded them from combat.The GIs served in segregated units led by white officers, often working in construction, supply, or other service groups.Black leaders pressed the government to end military discrimination.?In time, the armed services gave more black soldiers the opportunity to engage in combat and to become officers.?The army air corps established its first black combat unit in 1941.?Known as the?Tuskegee Airmen, these pilots and their support crews showed that African Americans could handle the most demanding assignments.?They served mainly as bomber escorts, engaging in direct combat with German fighter planes.?The Tuskegee Airmen gained a reputation for skill and courage, shooting some 400 German attackers out of the sky.?They were the only fighter group never to lose a bomber to enemy planes.Seeking Opportunity and Equality on the Home Front?Black leaders were also working to improve conditions at home.?In June 1941, A. Philip Randolph, head of a powerful all-black railroad union, met with President Roosevelt at the White House.?The government had done little to end discrimination in defense-related jobs.?One steelmaker expressed the attitude of many in the defense industry when he said, “We have not had a Negro worker in twenty-five years, and do not plan to start now.” Roosevelt sympathized with black Americans, but the war in Europe had kept him from paying much attention to civil rights—until Randolph’s visit.Randolph focused Roosevelt’s attention by threatening to lead a massive march on Washington to protest discrimination.?He promised that unless Roosevelt acted, tens of thousands of African Americans would swarm into the nation’s capital on July 1.?The threat worked.?On June 25, 1941, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, outlawing discrimination by defense contractors.This executive order helped pave the way for nearly a million African Americans to work for defense industries during the war.?It also triggered a migration of African Americans out of the rural South and into the industrial cities of the North and the West.?From 1940 to 1945, some 500,000 black Americans, attracted by higher-paying jobs, left the South.?In the process, they escaped the Jim Crow laws that legalized segregation and kept many of them from voting.?In the cities, however, black Americans faced other hardships, including a lack of housing and social services, as well as ongoing racial discrimination.They also faced a white backlash.?Race riots broke out in many cities across the country as black migrants competed with white residents for housing and jobs.?One of the worst riots occurred in Detroit, Michigan, in the summer of 1943.?A fistfight and other minor incidents ballooned into a widespread conflict.?Mobs of rioters burned automobiles, looted stores, and engaged in bloody battles in the streets.?The riots resulted in the deaths of 25 blacks and 9 whites.Click to read captionChallenging Racism at Home?The Double V campaign’s call for an end to racism and segregation received support from several African American organizations.?One group, the National Urban League, had been helping black migrants since its founding in 1910.?It opposed discrimination in defense plants, fought to integrate labor unions, and pushed federal officials to ensure equal opportunity for African Americans in housing and employment.?Another group, the NAACP, had been fighting for equality since 1909.?It focused on seeking racial justice through the courts.?During the war, its membership soared.The National Urban League and the NAACP did not want to undermine the war effort, so they avoided making strident demands.?Another organization, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), took a tougher stance.Founded in 1942, CORE believed in confronting discrimination through nonviolent protest.?Its efforts, along with the work of the NAACP and the National Urban League, helped set the stage for the postwar civil rights movement.7.?Jewish Americans and the WarClick to read captionThe war brought special hardships for Jewish Americans.?They not only made sacrifices like other Americans did, but they also suffered from knowing that millions of Jews were being imprisoned and murdered in Europe.?Furthermore, they could do nothing to stop the slaughter.Growing Alarm at Nazi Persecution of Jews?American Jews started hearing reports of Nazi persecution in Germany shortly after Hitler took power in 1933.?That year, the Nazi Party organized a nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses.?Two years later, the German parliament stripped Jews of their citizenship.?It also forced them to sell their property to non-Jews.?Shortly after taking over Austria in March 1938, Hitler began persecuting Austrian Jews.?Tens of thousands fled.Then, on November 9, 1938, the Nazis instigated a night of anti-Jewish rioting known as?Kristallnacht,?or the “night of broken glass.” Mobs smashed the windows of thousands of Jewish-owned shops, burned nearly every Jewish synagogue in Germany, and killed more than 90 Jews.?Some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.?These events received detailed coverage in the American press.After?Kristallnacht,?thousands of Jews wanted to flee to the United States.?But the 1924 National Origins Act placed severe limits on the number of immigrants from any one nation.?Besides, very few Americans wanted to open the country to a flood of immigrants, especially during the Depression.These factors, combined with widespread anti-Semitism, led to incidents such as the voyage of the steamship?St. Louis.?In 1939, the?St. Louis?carried 930 Jews from Germany across the Atlantic Ocean to Cuba.?But Cuba refused to accept the refugees.?The?St. Louis?next steamed north along the Florida coast.?Roosevelt ignored pleas for help from the ship’s passengers, however.?With food and water running low, the captain decided to return to Europe.?A number of passengers ended up in France and the Low Countries or back in Germany.?Many would later die in concentration camps.During the war, reports trickled out of Europe about mass killings of Jews by the Nazis.?Accounts from Poland told of concentration camps that had gas chambers for killing Jews.?Few American news sources passed this information along to the public, however.?When they did, the stories did not make headlines.?Editors failed to tie these stories together or explain that they represented a Nazi campaign to exterminate European Jews.Click to read captionJewish Americans Urge the Government to Help Jews in Europe?Jewish Americans, however, were painfully aware of the mass murder of European Jews.?Many had relatives and friends in Europe but felt helpless to save them.?Others took action, such as boycotting German products, raising money for refugees, and holding public demonstrations.?In July 1942, about 20,000 people gathered at Madison Square Garden in New York City to protest Nazi brutality.?Similar rallies took place in Chicago, Los Angeles, and other cities.?Jews urged officials to send food packages to concentration camps and to set up prisoner exchanges to free Jews.?Jewish groups pleaded with legislators and the president to change immigration laws.Several factors kept the government from offering refuge to victims of the Nazis.?Polls showed that most Americans, their views colored by anti-Semitism, were unwilling to admit large numbers of European Jews.?Even many American Jews worried that massive immigration might intensify anti-Semitic feelings.?Roosevelt also feared espionage and sabotage.?Advisors insisted that any stream of Jewish refugees into the United States would include Nazi agents.By the end of 1942, the government knew that Hitler was slaughtering Jews in a systematic way.?Still, it was not until 1944 that Roosevelt issued an executive order creating the?War Refugee Board.?This agency arranged for Jewish refugees to stay at centers in Italy and North Africa, as well as in former army camps in the United States.?Henry Morgenthau Jr., the only Jew in Roosevelt’s cabinet, later recalled the mission of the War Refugee Board.?“The stake was the Jewish population of Nazi-controlled Europe,” he said.?“The threat was their total obliteration.?The hope was to get a few of them out.”Jewish American GIs Go to War?Like other Americans, Jews did what they could to support the war effort.?More than 500,000 Jewish Americans went to war, including half of all Jewish men aged 18 to 44.The opportunity to serve in the armed forces transformed the lives of many Jewish American soldiers.?Many had previously been unaware of life outside their urban neighborhoods.?As GIs, they often trained in the rural South and then journeyed overseas.?Both experiences opened their eyes to unfamiliar cultures.In the armed forces, Jewish American GIs often felt the sting of prejudice.?A frustrated corporal, after two years in the marines, sent a letter to the editor of a Jewish magazine.?“I am the only Jewish boy in this detachment,” he wrote.?“I am confronted with anti-Semitism on all sides.”Other Jewish soldiers had a different experience, however, that affirmed their faith in their country and its ideals.?In 1944, GI and future novelist Leon Uris wrote a letter to his father noting that he “fought beside Catholics, Protestants, and Mormons, Indians, Irish, Italians, Poles.” Uris’s experience convinced him that “it’s not the religion we look at, but the man himself.”8.?Mexican Americans Leave the Fields for War WorkClick to read captionDuring the war, many Mexican Americans faced discrimination in their daily lives.?Like African Americans, some wondered whether joining the armed forces made sense.?“Why fight for America,” one soldier asked, “when you have not been treated as an American?”?Despite such doubts, many Mexican Americans enlisted in the armed forces, while others left their traditional farm jobs or segregated urban neighborhoods to join the industrial workforce.?These changes opened up new opportunities for Mexican Americans.Mexican Americans and Mexicans Join the War Effort?About half a million Mexican Americans served in the armed forces during World War II.?One of their slogans was “Americans All.” As this suggests, many saw the war as an opportunity to prove their loyalty and become part of the mainstream.A higher proportion of Mexican Americans fought in combat units than any other ethnic group.?In addition, Mexican American soldiers suffered heavy casualties in comparison with other ethnic groups.?They also received many combat awards.?Fourteen Texans received the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism in the war.?Of those, five were Mexican Americans.?One Mexican American leader summed up the social effects of the war this way:“This war .?.?.?has shown those ‘across the tracks’ that we all share the same problems.?It has shown them what the Mexican American will do, what responsibility he will take, and what leadership qualities he will demonstrate.?After this struggle, the status of the Mexican Americans will be different.”—Manuel de la Raza, quoted in Carlos Mu?oz Jr.,?Youth, Identity, Power:?The Chicano Movement,?1989Click to read captionBefore the war, discrimination had barred most Mexican Americans from many high-paying industrial jobs.?The war, with its labor shortages, changed that.?Thousands of Mexican Americans left their rural, agricultural lives behind and migrated to industrial centers to work in the defense industry.To replace Mexican American farm labor, the government looked south of the border.?In August 1942, the United States and Mexico devised the Bracero Program.?Bracero?is the Spanish term for “manual laborer.” Under the program, Mexican citizens received short-term contracts to come to the United States to work.?By 1944, about 120,000 Mexican braceros were performing farm labor in 21 states.?Other Mexicans did maintenance work on railroads in the West.Prejudice Against Mexican Americans Erupts in Zoot Suit Riots?Mexican Americans in major cities lived apart from whites.?Their barrios, or neighborhoods, were nearly self-sufficient, with their own shops, churches, and schools.?Like many immigrant communities, barrios tended to develop in poor, run-down parts of cities, where crime rates were often high.?The barrio of East Los Angeles during the war was no different.?Mexican Americans there had little regular contact with white Americans.?Relations between the two groups were hostile.?In 1943, a full-scale riot erupted in the barrio.?Part of the focus of the riot was a fashion fad known as the “zoot suit.”A zoot suit consists of a flat, broad-brimmed felt hat, a long suit coat with large shoulder pads, and baggy pants that flared at the knee.?Many Mexican American teenagers, or?pachucos,?in East Los Angeles began dressing in this flashy style and wearing their hair long in the back, in the ducktail fashion.?White Americans tended to associate the zoot suit with Mexican American street gangs, many of whom also adopted the style.?Thus, many people saw the outlandish zoot suit as a symbol of lawlessness.Pachucos?and servicemen from the local navy base occasionally clashed.?Those small-scale clashes escalated in June 1943 into the?Zoot Suit Riots.?For several nights, mobs of sailors and marines roamed the streets of the barrio, attacking not just gang members but also anyone wearing a zoot suit.?They beat hundreds ofpachucos?and ripped off their suits.The Los Angeles police did little to stop the servicemen.?Instead, they arrested the victims and hauled them off to jail.?Meanwhile, newspapers whipped up the mobs with headlines such as “Zoot Suiters Learn Lesson in Fights with Servicemen.” Military police finally stepped in to end the violence.?Later, an investigating committee found that the main causes of the Zoot Suit Riots were racial prejudice, police discrimination, and inflammatory articles in the press.1.?IntroductionClick to read captionAfter the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States began mobilizing troops for war.?Some of these soldiers would end up in Europe, fighting the German army.?First, though, they had to cross the Atlantic Ocean on troop ships, braving attacks by Germany’s deadly U-boat fleet.Since the start of the war, in 1939, German U-boats had been working to disrupt and destroy Allied shipping in the Atlantic.?During this phase of the war, known as the Battle of the Atlantic, U-boats sank thousands of ships carrying vital war supplies.Click to read captionWhen the United States entered the war, its Atlantic coastal waters were relatively unprotected.?Freighters and oil tankers sailed along the coast without military escort.?U-boats began to prowl the area, sinking ships on the East Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico.?The United States was not prepared to respond to these attacks.?It did not have enough naval vessels.?Nor, at this point, did it require coastal cities to observe nighttime blackouts.?The city lights made it possible for U-boats to spot ships as they entered or left American ports, thus making them easy prey for German torpedoes.During the first several months of 1942, U-boats sank dozens of American ships off the Atlantic Coast.?At night, coastal residents could hear the hum of U-boats just off shore.?They could even see ships burning at sea.?Oil spills and debris from wrecked ships washed up on beaches all along the East Coast.These losses would not continue, however.?As in World War I, the Allies reduced their losses by using the convoy system.?Destroyers and other naval vessels would surround and protect unarmed ships.?In addition, the United States began a feverish period of shipbuilding.?By 1943, it was churning out enough ships to replace lost vessels and to defend against U-boat attacks.?This new U.S. fleet would play a key role in naval battles and in supporting ground and air forces during World War II.2.?Preparing for War in EuropeIn late December 1941, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met in Washington, D.C. Their purpose was to devise a strategy to help the?Allies?defeat the?Axis powers.?They knew they could not afford to fight an offensive war on two fronts—Europe and the Pacific—at the same time.?So, at this early date, they decided on a strategy of “Europe First.”?They would concentrate most of their forces on winning back Europe, while initially fighting a defensive war against Japan in the Pacific.Axis Powers Roll Across Europe into North Africa?By the time the United States entered World War II, the Axis powers controlled most of Europe.?Great Britain had saved itself by fighting off an intense German air attack during the Battle of Britain.?But the country was running out of money and resources.?On the eastern front, the Nazis had invaded the Soviet Union, using blitzkrieg tactics to overcome Soviet troops massed at the border.?One large German force nearly reached Moscow before the onset of winter froze it in its tracks.?Another force marched toward the Soviet Union’s oil-rich Caucasus region.Click to read captionOil played a key role in Axis strategy.?Hitler already controlled oil fields in Romania, but he sought more oil to keep his war machine running.?He also hoped to cut off Allied oil from the Middle East.But first he had to secure North Africa by pushing the British out of Egypt.?In 1941, Hitler sent Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps, a tank-based German army division, to join the Italian army already in North Africa.?By June 1942, Rommel’s force had taken much of the region and had driven deep into Egypt.Europeans Suffer Under German Occupation?In German-occupied Europe, many people were suffering.?Some lived under puppet governments, like Vichy France.?Others endured harsh military rule.?The SS, a brutal military unit within the Nazi Party, forced millions of Europeans to work in the German arms industry.?The SS treated Russians, Poles, and other Slavs with special contempt, partly because Hitler claimed the Slavs were subhuman.?The Nazis worked them to death and killed large groups of them outright.No group suffered more than the Jews.?Hitler had long been obsessed with the “Jewish question”—how to rid Germany of Jews.?He had stripped Jews of their civil rights, had them beaten or killed, and confined them to concentration camps.?As Germany expanded, more Jews came under Nazi control.?Thus, the “Jewish question” grew more critical.?Hitler forced Jews from all over Europe into overcrowded ghettos, small sections of cities that could be walled off and guarded.?The largest ghetto established by the Nazis was the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland.?Thousands of people died in the ghettos from starvation and disease.Click to read captionGradually, the Nazis decided on what they called the “final solution.” As part of this plan, they would systematically exterminate the Jews.?The slaughter began in the Soviet Union, shortly after the invasion in 1941.?Mobile killing squads rounded up and murdered thousands of Soviet Jews at a time.?In early 1942, the Nazis built the first of six death camps in Poland.?Jews, many from ghettos, were shipped to these camps by rail, often packed into cattle cars.Unlike regular concentration camps, these death camps were equipped with gas chambers.?Camp operators sealed groups of Jews and other prisoners inside these rooms and turned on the poison gas, usually carbon monoxide.?Pregnant women, young children, the elderly, and the sick were killed soon after they arrived.?Able-bodied prisoners were kept alive as long as they could work, often at a nearby factory.?Each death camp could kill tens of thousands of people each month.?In addition to Jews, the Nazis also gassed homosexuals, disabled people, captured Soviet soldiers, and Gypsies, among others.Allied Leaders Debate War Strategies?When Roosevelt and Churchill met in Washington in 1941, they knew nothing about the Nazis’ “final solution.” Their goal was to figure out how to win the war in Europe.?To do this, they had to choose from a number of possible strategies.Click to read captionAt the time, the Allies had limited resources.?For a few months at least, while the United States gathered troops and war materials, the Allies would have to focus on defending territory against the Axis powers.?After that, they would go on the attack, but they had to decide where.They had several choices.?Occupied France was a possibility, because the French people would support such an invasion.?Also, nearby Britain could serve as a staging area for the massing of troops and resources before the assault.?But the German army had a strong presence in France that would make such an invasion extremely difficult.Some thought a direct attack on Italy made more sense.?The Italian army was fairly weak, and Italy would provide a good base for securing the rest of Europe.?Sailing through the U-boat-infested waters of the Mediterranean, however, would be dangerous.Others wanted to launch the Allied offensive in North Africa, which was not as well defended and could serve as a gateway to Europe.?But it was also far from the ultimate target, Germany, so it would test the Allies’ ability to transport and maintain their forces.Another plan called for moving troops into the Soviet Union to help the Soviet Red Army push back the Germans.?The USSR, now one of the Allies, greatly needed its partners’ help.?But transporting and supplying forces so far from home would require a massive effort.3.?War in Europe, 1942-1945Britain’s choice of strategy in early 1942 was clear.?Already caught up in the battle against Rommel’s forces, Churchill wanted the Allies to strike North Africa first.?In contrast, the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, wanted an invasion of France to take pressure off his weakened army.?Roosevelt’s top military advisor, General George C. Marshall, also supported this option.?But this plan had two problems.?First, the U.S. Army did not have enough trained combat forces.?That meant the exhausted British army would have to do most of the fighting.?Second, German U-boats were sinking ships at an alarming pace in the North Atlantic.?Transporting masses of soldiers and supplies to a staging area in Britain would be a dangerous, perhaps disastrous, process.?In June, Roosevelt made his decision.?U.S. forces would invade North Africa, starting in the fall.Click to read captionAllies Invade North Africa and Italy?In November 1942, Allied forces made sea landings in Morocco and Algeria.?Led by the American general Dwight D. Eisenhower, they swept east into Tunisia.?The Germans quickly sent reinforcements across the Mediterranean.?Meanwhile, British forces stopped Rommel and forced him out of Egypt.?Rommel’s Afrika Korps retreated west toward Tunisia, with the British in hot pursuit.American soldiers did their first fighting of the war in a series of battles in the winter of 1942–1943.The U.S. II Corps, which saw much of the action in North Africa, benefited from the leadership of two generals—first George Patton and then Omar Bradley.?They helped the combined Allied armies launch a final offensive in May 1943.?Axis resistance in the region collapsed, leaving about 250,000 German and Italian soldiers in the hands of the Allies.Using North Africa as a staging area, the Allies crossed the Mediterranean into Sicily, a large island in southern Italy.?The massive Allied assault in July 1943 met little opposition at first.?The success of the invasion put a scare into Italy’s political leaders.?Mussolini’s North Africa campaign and several other failures had caused them to lose faith in?Il Duce.?The Fascist Grand Council met on July 24 and voted to restore the king and parliament.?Mussolini resigned the next day.?Italy soon surrendered to the Allies.?Its government signed an armistice in September and declared war on Germany the next month.German forces were still in Italy, however.?As the Allies marched north, the Germans battled them every inch of the way.?By October, the Allied army had taken about a third of the Italian peninsula, but they did not get much farther that year.?A solid German defensive line completely stopped the Allies about 60 miles south of Rome, the Italian capital.Click to read captionSoviets Fight Alone at Stalingrad?The decision to invade North Africa had left the Soviets on their own.?Hitler now had the chance to crush the USSR with a new summer offensive.?Starting in June 1942, Axis troops thrust farther into Soviet territory.?Hitler split his forces so they could seize the rest of the Caucasus and also take Stalingrad, a large city on the Volga River.?At Stalingrad, German firebombs set most of the city on fire, but Stalin forbade his soldiers to retreat.?“Not a step back!” he ordered.?By mid-September, Axis troops had a large Soviet force trapped in a strip of the city along the Volga.Fierce street-by-street fighting followed for two months.?Then, in November, the Soviet Red Army began a?counteroffensive, launching its defensive forces against the Nazi assault.?In a few days, the Soviets had encircled the German troops.?Hitler insisted that his soldiers fight to the death, which most of them did.?In January 1943, the remains of the German force, starving and frozen, surrendered to the Soviets.The?Battle of Stalingrad?cost Germany more than 200,000 troops, while more than a million Soviet soldiers died.?Nevertheless, the USSR had forced the Germans to retreat, giving up all they had gained after June 1942, including the Caucasus.Taking the War to the Germans by Air?With the loss of the Caucasus, Hitler had only one major source of oil—Romania.?The Romanian oil fields became a prime target of Allied strategic bombing.?Strategic bombing involves hitting vital targets to destroy the enemy’s war-making capacity.American pilots in B-24 Liberator and B-17 Flying Fortress bombers typically launched daytime raids.?They favored?precision bombing?of specific targets.?Flying at high altitude to avoid antiaircraft fire, they dropped bombs on oil refineries, rail yards, factories, and U-boat bases.?By the end of the war, Germany’s infrastructure and economy were in ruins.British pilots relied mainly on?saturation bombing?the rapid release of a large number of bombs over a wide area.?They usually flew nighttime raids over enemy cities.?The strategy behind the bombing of cities, with its appalling loss of life, was to destroy civilian morale and force a surrender.?This strategy turned German cities like Dresden and Hamburg into rubble-strewn graveyards, but it did not bring an early end to the war.In August 1944, American planes dropped more than a thousand bombs on an oil-production facility in Poland.?Five miles to the west stood Auschwitz, the largest Nazi death camp.?Jewish organizations, the War Refugee Board, and others urged the government to bomb Auschwitz.?If the gas chambers or nearby rail lines were destroyed, they said, thousands of lives could be saved.American military officials opposed bombing Auschwitz.?They said they could not afford to divert resources from military targets.?They also claimed that such bombing might kill many prisoners.?Elie Wiesel, who had been a prisoner at Auschwitz, said he would have welcomed the bombs anyway.?“We were no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of that death,” he recalled.?“Every bomb filled us with joy and gave us new confidence in life.”Click to read captionOperation Overlord Opens a New Front in France?In the end, the Allies decided not to bomb Auschwitz because doing so would not hasten the end of the war.?To meet that objective, the military focused most of its efforts in 1944 on the invasion of France.?They code-named this mission Operation Overlord.General Eisenhower directed the invasion.?At his command were about 1,200 warships, 800 transport ships, 4,000 landing craft, 10,000 airplanes, and hundreds of tanks.?Troops would cross the English Channel by ship and land on the beaches of Normandy, in northern France.?D-Day—the day the invasion began—was June 6, 1944.?Eisenhower sent off his first wave of 156,000 troops with a message of hope:?“You will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.” He knew that many of these men would not return.The landing craft unloaded Allied troops on Normandy’s five beaches, while warships provided covering gunfire from offshore.?German gun batteries took aim at the mass of invading soldiers, who by now were wading ashore, crawling along the sand, and climbing the dunes and cliffs.?One soldier later described his arrival at Omaha Beach, scene of the bloodiest fighting:It seemed like the whole world exploded.?There was gunfire from battleships, destroyers, and cruisers.?The bombers were still hitting the beaches.?As we went in, we could see small craft from the 116th Infantry that had gone in ahead, sunk.?There were bodies bobbing in the water, even out three or four miles.—Lt.?Robert Edlin, from Gerald Astor,?June 6, 1944:?The Voices of D–DayAfter the chaos of the landing, the soldiers regrouped.?By the end of the first day, the Allies held the entire 59-mile section of the Normandy coast.?In July, the American army, under General Bradley, and the British army, under General Bernard Montgomery, began a rapid sweep across France.?In August, the Allies liberated Paris.?In September, the first American GIs crossed the German border.Click to read captionAllies Liberate Nazi Concentration Camps?As the Americans carried out the invasion of France, the Red Army chased a retreating German force out of the Soviet Union and into Poland.?SS officials frantically tried to hide evidence of concentration camps in Poland.?They cleared out many of the forced-labor camps, marching prisoners westward and shooting any who fell behind.They also tried to dismantle some of the death camps, quickly killing the remaining prisoners.?With the Red Army closing in on Auschwitz, the Nazis crowded about 60,000 Jews and others onto freight trains and shipped them west into Germany.?The survivors ended up in camps such as Buchenwald and Dachau.Allied soldiers fighting their way through Germany stumbled upon concentration camps.?These camps, though not as grim as the death camps of Poland, shocked the soldiers.?The camps held thousands of slave laborers, starved to near death.?Many of these “living skeletons,” too sick to even eat, died in the weeks after they were liberated.?At Dachau, the smell of rotting flesh led GIs to 28 railway cars packed with dead bodies.?They also uncovered evidence of medical research.?SS doctors at the camp had carried out inhumane experiments on more than 3,500 prisoners.The Nazis had committed crimes so reprehensible that no word existed to describe them.?In 1944, a Polish Jew coined the termgenocide?to refer to the systematic killing of a racial, political, or cultural group.?The Nazis killed some 6 million Jews, or about 40 percent of the world’s Jewish population.?An existing word that meant “sacrifice by fire”—holocaust—was capitalized and applied to this massive slaughter.?The?Holocaust?was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of Jews and other minority groups by the Nazis.The War in Europe Ends with Germany’s Surrender?When the Allies crossed from France into Germany, they met fierce resistance.?By December 1944, their offensive had stalled.?Hitler made plans to burst through the Allied lines in the wooded Ardennes region of Belgium, where the American forces were weakest.?He launched his counteroffensive on December 16.?Eight German armored divisions smashed into the surprised Americans, creating a huge bulge in the American line.Allied air support and quick action by Patton’s Third Army forced the Germans to withdraw by mid-January.?The Battle of the Bulge was the last German offensive on the western front.By April 1945, the Red Army had fought its way through Poland and into Germany to the outskirts of Berlin.?On April 30, with advancing Soviet soldiers just half a mile from his Berlin bunker, Hitler killed himself.?German forces quickly began surrendering, and at midnight on May 8, the war in Europe officially ended.?President Roosevelt did not live to celebrate Victory in Europe Day, or V-E Day.?He had died on April 12.?The new president, Harry S Truman, dedicated the victory to Franklin Roosevelt.4.?Preparing for War in the PacificWorld War II took a very different course in Asia and the Pacific.?After the shock of the Pearl Harbor attack, American forces in the Pacific needed several months to regroup.?During this time, Japan took control of much of the region’s natural resources, including oil and rubber.?Through conquest, Japan formed what it called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.?The “Co-Prosperity” in the title had nothing to do with sharing the wealth.?Instead, Japan’s goal was its own economic self-sufficiency, along with expanded political influence.Click to read captionThe Japanese Advance in Asia and the Pacific?Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor was just the first in a series of strikes against Allied territory in the Pacific.?By the end of March 1942, the Japanese had captured British Hong Kong and Singapore, the American islands of Guam and Wake, and the oil-rich Dutch East Indies.?Japan had also invaded several larger possessions of the Allies, including the American-held Philippine Islands and the British colony of Burma.In the Philippines, Americans and Filipinos under General Douglas MacArthur resisted a fierce Japanese onslaught.?Disease and malnutrition killed many of the defenders.?In March, Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to leave the islands.?Upon his departure, the general promised, “I shall return.” Two months later, Japan completed its conquest of the Philippines.?On the largest island, the Japanese rounded up 70,000 starving, exhausted American and Filipino prisoners and marched them up the Bataan Peninsula near Manila to a prison camp.?During the brutal 63-mile march, Japanese soldiers beat and bayoneted many of the prisoners.?More than 7,000 died on the infamous Bataan Death March.The fall of the British colony of Burma, in May 1942, had serious consequences for China.?Japan already controlled most of coastal China, including the main ports.?No supplies could reach the Chinese army by sea.?China relied on British and American supplies carried in from India over the Burma Road.?Now Japan had cut this lifeline.?If Japan defeated China, hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers would be free to fight elsewhere.?To help China keep fighting, the Allies set up an airborne supply route over the Himalayas.The Pacific War Begins in the Air and at Sea?Japan’s string of victories in the Pacific hurt American confidence.?To boost morale, Roosevelt urged his military chiefs to strike directly at the Japanese home islands.?They came up with a plan to fly B-25 bombers off an aircraft carrier.?The B-25 could make a short takeoff and also had the range to presumably reach Japan and then land at Allied airfields in China.Click to read captionOn April 18, 1942, 16 bombers took off from the carrier?Hornet,?which had sailed to within 650 miles of Japan.?Led by pilot Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, the bombers hit Tokyo and other Japanese cities.?Although the bombs did little damage, this surprise attack thrilled Americans as much as it shocked the Japanese.?Japan reacted by putting more precious resources into defending the home islands.?It also decided to try to destroy the remaining American fleet, a plan that would prove disastrous.During Doolittle’s raid, American code breakers got news of enemy activity far to the south in the Coral Sea.?Japan was moving into position to isolate Australia, a key American ally.?To stop the Japanese, Admiral Chester Nimitz sent two aircraft carriers, several cruisers, and a few destroyers—all he could spare at the time.?They would face a larger Japanese force that included three carriers.The resulting Battle of the Coral Sea, in early May 1942, was fought entirely by carrier-based aircraft.?It was the first naval battle in history in which the enemies’ warships never came within sight of each other.?Japanese aircraft sank the carrier?Lexington?and damaged the?Yorktown.?American planes sank one Japanese carrier and damaged the other two.?Despite fairly even losses, the Americans gained a strategic victory.?They blocked Japanese expansion to the south, and they learned a valuable lesson—the Japanese navy could be beaten.Military Leaders Consider Their Options in the Pacific?The “Europe First” strategy put Pacific commanders at a disadvantage.?Because they had fewer ships, planes, and soldiers than the Japanese, a defensive strategy made sense.?American naval forces would try to contain the Japanese, stopping their expansion in the Central and South Pacific.?Critics in the navy pointed out that this strategy allowed the Japanese to strengthen their hold on newly won territories, making those lands harder to win back later.?As part of the defensive strategy, these critics advised keeping the Japanese off balance with occasional attacks.Some navy officials wanted to go on the offensive, and they debated different strategies.?One idea was to build air bases in the Aleutian Islands, the part of Alaska that extends westward toward Japan.?But pilots and their crews would have had to deal with the snow, wind, and fog that afflicted this region.?Also, all supplies would have had to be shipped in from the U.S. mainland.Another idea was to build bases in China.?China’s coast would have made an ideal staging area for an air assault on nearby Japan.?However, the fuel, bombs, and parts needed to keep bombers in the air could best be delivered by sea, and the Japanese controlled China’s ports.?Inland air bases might have worked, but they would have had to be supplied by planes flying over the Himalayas from India.A third offensive option called for liberating Japanese-held territory in the Pacific.?By first freeing islands far from Japan, American forces could gradually move closer to get within B-29 striking distance.?This would take time, though, and Japanese resistance would stiffen the closer the Americans got to Japan.?Many of the islands were well fortified, so American casualties would be high.5.?War in the Pacific, 1942-1945The Americans led the Allied forces in the Pacific and did most of the fighting.?When they went on the offensive, they chose a strategy of liberating Japanese-held islands in the Pacific and using them as stepping-stones.?Each captured island served as a base for assaults on other islands as the Allied forces moved closer to Japan.One of the keys to Allied success in the Pacific was the use of secret codes.?The United States trained a special group of Navajo Indian “code talkers” for this task.Because Navajo is not a written language and is understood by very few people, it made an excellent basis for a code to transmit vital information.?The Navajo code talkers played a key role in the Pacific campaign.Click to read captionThe Japanese Offensive Ends at the Battle of Midway?Before the Allies could go on the offensive, they had to stop Japanese expansion.?They achieved this goal at the?Battle of Midway, in June 1942.?The Americans intercepted a Japanese message telling of plans for a major offensive.?They figured out that the target was the U.S. base at Midway, a pair of islands about 1,200 miles northwest of Pearl Harbor.?With this knowledge, the navy sat in wait for the Japanese fleet.At Midway, Japanese naval strategists hoped to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet, which had been their plan since Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo.?Instead, the U.S. Navy won a resounding victory.?American planes from Midway and from three aircraft carriers demolished the enemy force, destroying all four Japanese carriers, a cruiser, and about 300 aircraft.?Japan never recovered from the loss of the carriers and so many experienced pilots.?The Battle of Midway was Japan’s last offensive action.From then on, Japan would focus on defense.Liberating the Pacific Islands Proves Costly?A strategy known as?leapfrogging?enabled the Americans to go on the offensive with limited resources.?They would often leapfrog, or bypass, a heavily defended island and then capture a nearby island that was not well defended.?The captured island was then used as an airbase to bomb the Japanese-held island and prevent ships from resupplying it.?Cut off from reinforcements and supplies, the Japanese forces would be left to wither.General MacArthur described this leapfrogging approach as “hit ’em where they ain’t—let ’em die on the vine.”Despite the success of leapfrogging, many of the island invasions came at a terrible cost.?Thousands of soldiers died in the jungles of Guadalcanal, New Guinea, Tarawa, and Saipan.?But they kept pushing the Japanese back, closer and closer to the home islands.?In October 1944, MacArthur made his triumphant return to the Philippines, where his forces would battle the Japanese until the end of the war.?In August 1944, the marines finished retaking the Mariana Islands.?The Marianas campaign was a landmark victory.?It gave the Allied Pacific force secure bases from which long-range B-29s could make strategic bombing raids on Japan.Click to read captionThe Final Push Toward Japan Brings Heavy Losses?The Allied push through the Pacific steadily shrank the defensive perimeter that Japan had established around the home islands.?That perimeter would all but disappear if the Allies could capture the key islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.?Iwo Jima’s airfields would offer a place for B-29s to land in an emergency.?They would also serve as a base for fighter planes escorting bombers over Japan.?Control of Okinawa, just 310 miles south of Japan, would give Americans a prime staging area for the invasion of Japan.?To meet these threats, Japanese military leaders moved their best army units from Japan and China to defend the two strategic islands.Click to read captionOn the small volcanic island of Iwo Jima, the defenders dug caves, tunnels, and concrete-lined bunkers.?Three months of Allied bombardment before the February 1945 invasion did little to soften the defense.?The month-long Battle of Iwo Jima was among the bloodiest of the war.?Nearly all of the 22,000 Japanese troops followed their commander’s orders to fight to the death.?To win the island, more than 6,800 American troops died.?Admiral Nimitz noted that on Iwo Jima, “uncommon valor was a common virtue.”To take the much larger island of Okinawa, the Allies mounted a huge amphibious, or sea-to-land, invasion in April 1945.?More than 1,200 American and British ships, including 40 aircraft carriers, supported a combined army-marine force of 182,000.?As on Iwo Jima, the 120,000 troops defending Okinawa strongly resisted the American invaders.?The bloody combat at the?Battle of Okinawa, much of it hand-to-hand, continued for two months.?It claimed the lives of some 12,000 American soldiers and more than 100,000 Japanese soldiers.Meanwhile, another kind of combat was taking place in the surrounding waters.?Earlier in the Pacific war, the Japanese had introduced a new weapon—kamikaze?pilots.?Hundreds of men flew their bomb-filled planes directly into the vessels of the Allied fleet.?Kamikaze attacks sank or damaged hundreds of ships.?But they failed to sink any aircraft carriers, which were their main targets.The Manhattan Project Develops a Top Secret Weapon?The stage was now set for an invasion of Japan.?But the United States had its scientists working on another option.?In 1939, German American scientist Albert Einstein had written to President Roosevelt explaining that scientists might soon be able to turn uranium into a new form of energy.?That energy, he said, could be harnessed to build “extremely powerful bombs.” Einstein expressed his fear that Germany was already engaged in experiments to create such an?atomic bomb.?The power of this explosive weapon comes from the energy suddenly released by splitting the nuclei of uranium or plutonium atoms.Click to read captionThree years after Einstein sent his letter, the government established the?Manhattan Project, a top-secret program to develop an atomic weapon.?A team of scientists, many of whom had fled fascist nations in Europe, carried on the research and development.?Much of the work took place at a lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico.?By the summer of 1945, their efforts had produced the first atomic bomb.On July 16, that test bomb was exploded on a remote air base in the New Mexico desert.?Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer witnessed the blinding flash of light, intense heat, and violent shock wave that the bomb produced.?He later said the blast reminded him of a line from Hindu scripture:?“I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”Truman Faces a Decision to Drop the Bomb?After the successful test of the atomic bomb, or A-bomb, President Truman had to decide whether to drop the bomb on Japan or to launch an invasion.After Iwo Jima and Okinawa, Truman knew an invasion would produce enormous casualties.?The number of Allies killed and wounded might reach half a million, he was told.Truman faced a stubborn enemy.?American B-29s were already destroying Japan with conventional bombs, including incendiaries.?These firebombs killed hundreds of thousands of people and turned large areas of major Japanese cities, with their masses of wooden buildings, into cinders.?At the same time, a naval blockade cut off the supply of raw materials to Japan.?The bombing and blockade had left many Japanese starving, and many of the country’s leaders realized that Japan could not possibly win the war.?Yet the Japanese refused to accept the unconditional surrender Truman demanded.?In fact, they seemed ready to fight to the last man, woman, and child, in the spirit of the kamikaze.?Oppenheimer and others believed only the shock of an atomic bomb would end the Japanese resistance.Some officials objected to dropping the A-bomb.?General Curtis LeMay insisted that his B-29 bombing campaign would soon bring Japan’s surrender.?General Eisenhower agreed.?“It was my belief,” Eisenhower wrote later, “that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’ [honor].” Others maintained that the Japanese would give up if Truman would agree to let them keep their beloved emperor.The United States Bombs Hiroshima and Nagasaki?Truman stuck to his demand for an unconditional surrender.?He told Japan that the alternative was “prompt and utter destruction.”?On August 6, 1945, a B-29 named the?Enola Gay?dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, a city of 300,000 people.?Within seconds of the explosion, up to 80,000 people died.?The blast’s shock wave toppled nearly 60,000 structures, and hundreds of fires consumed the rest of the city.?Three days later, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb.?This one obliterated the city of Nagasaki, killing some 40,000 people instantly.?As many as 250,000 Japanese may have died from the two atomic bombs, either directly or as the result of burns, radiation poisoning, or cancer.Truman had no regrets.?“Let there be no mistake about it,” he said later.?“I regarded the bomb as a military weapon and never had any doubt that it should be used.”The destruction of Nagasaki brought a Japanese surrender.?Truman received this informal surrender on August 14, Victory over Japan Day, or V-J Day.?The terms of the surrender allowed the emperor to keep his office but only in a ceremonial role.?The Allies officially accepted the surrender aboard the American battleship?Missouriin Tokyo Bay.Millions celebrated V-J Day, which marked the end of the Second World War.?But they also mourned the loss of lives.?About 55 million died—30 million of them civilians.?The Soviet Union paid the highest human cost, with more than 20 million of its people killed.?Some 400,000 Americans, nearly all in the military, gave their lives.?Most Americans believed strongly that those soldiers, sailors, airmen, and others had died for a noble cause.2.?The End of IsolationismClick to read captionIn 1918, when President Woodrow Wilson proposed the League of Nations, Franklin Roosevelt—who was then assistant secretary of the navy—had high hopes for its success.?If the Senate had ratified the Treaty of Versailles and the United States had become a member of the League of Nations, perhaps the League might have stood up to Germany and helped prevent the actions that led to another world war.?Now that World War II had ended, would the United States slip back into isolationism, or would it take a strong part in world affairs?The United States Leads the Creation of New World Organizations?In the years leading up to World War II, Roosevelt had quietly fought against isolationism.?After Pearl Harbor, more and more Americans realized the United States could no longer stand alone in the world.?To be secure, the nation had to work with others to maintain peace.?This shift in attitude allowed Roosevelt to move toward a policy of internationalism.?Late in the war, he pushed for the creation of new worldwide organizations to help prevent future wars by promoting stronger economic and diplomatic ties between nations.In July 1944, representatives of the United States and 43 other nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.?Together, they founded the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, or the?World Bank.?The bank was designed to provide loans to help countries recover from the war and develop their economies.Much of the bank’s funding came from the United States.The same group of nations also created the International Monetary Fund.?The IMF’s goal was to stabilize the world monetary system and establish uniform exchange rates for foreign currency.?Making exchange rates more predictable would help international banking and trade.?Three years later, 23 nations took another step to encourage trade by signing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.?Member nations of GATT agreed to lower tariffs and to eliminate barriers to international trade.Click to read captionThe United States also worked closely with its allies to design a replacement for the League of Nations.?In the fall of 1944, representatives of the United States, Great Britain, China, and the Soviet Union gathered at Dumbarton Oaks, an estate in Washington, D.C. U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull opened the meeting:?“It is our task here to help lay the foundations upon which, after victory, peace, freedom, and a growing prosperity may be built for generations to come.” The product of this conference was a draft charter for a new organization called the?United Nations?(UN).?In June 1945, 50 nations signed the UN Charter.In seeking approval for the League of Nations, President Wilson had worked hard to win public support and thought he did not need the support of Republicans in the Senate.?In seeking support for the United Nations, Roosevelt did not make the same mistake.?He not only spoke to the public about the need for nations to “learn to work together” for peace and security but also worked to persuade Republican senators.?His efforts paid off, although he did not live to see the results.?In July 1945, three months after Roosevelt’s death, the Senate ratified U.S. membership in the United Nations by a vote of 89–2.The United Nations Gets Organized?The United States played a leading role in founding the United Nations.?Its influence is evident in the UN Charter, which proclaims what Roosevelt called “four essential human freedoms.” He had first identified those?Four Freedoms?in a speech in January 1941.?In that speech, he depicted a world in which all people would have freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.?“The world order which we seek,” he said, “is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.” In August 1941, Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had incorporated the Four Freedoms into the Atlantic Charter, which was a major expression of the Allies’ postwar goals.Four years later, the framers of the UN Charter looked to the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms when devising the framework for the United Nations.?The preamble to the UN Charter states that members seek to “reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.”Click to read captionTo reinforce these principles, the United Nations adopted the?Universal Declaration of Human Rights?in 1948.?This document affirms basic?human rights, including the rights to life, liberty, and equality before the law, as well as to freedom of religion, expression, and assembly.?Eleanor Roosevelt, who was the chair of the committee that drafted the declaration, compared it with the U.S. Bill of Rights and other similar documents.In addition to listing principles, the UN Charter lays out the structure of the United Nations.?The General Assembly is the main body of the United Nations and consists of all member states.?The Security Council, a much smaller but more powerful body, consists of just 15 member states.?Five of these members are permanent—the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China.?Each permanent member can veto any Security Council resolution.?The Security Council focuses on peace and security issues, and it can use military power to enforce its decisions.In 1947, the United Nations faced one of its first challenges.?It was drawn into a crisis in Palestine, a region on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea.?Jews, many of whom had migrated to the area to escape the Nazis, wanted to establish their own nation.?Arabs in the region rejected that idea, and violent clashes followed.?The United Nations decided to partition Palestine, dividing it into Arab and Jewish territories.?In 1948, the Jews proclaimed the state of Israel.?The first of several Arab-Israeli wars followed, and tensions continue in the region to this day.3.?Dealing with the Defeated Axis PowersEven before World War II ended, the Allies began to face important decisions about the future of the defeated Axis powers.?A generation earlier, the victors in World I had imposed a harsh peace on Germany.?The Treaty of Versailles, with its war-guilt clause and excessive reparations, had caused bitter resentment among Germans.?Adolf Hitler had used that resentment to help fuel his rise to power.?Looking back at the mistakes made after World War I, Roosevelt was determined not to let history repeat itself.Click to read captionWar Crimes Trials?Allied demands at the end of World War II were much less harsh than those in the Versailles Treaty.?Germany and Japan did have to disarm and give up the territory they had taken.?They also had to pay reparations.?But the Allies did not demand a great deal of money.?Instead, reparations took the form of industrial equipment and other goods and services.Roosevelt had explained this approach in his last address to Congress, in March 1945.?“By compelling reparations in kind—in plants, in machinery, in rolling stock [railroad cars], and in raw materials,” he said, “we shall avoid the mistake that we and other nations made after the last war.”?After World War II, Allied leaders did not want to punish the people of Germany and Japan.?They wanted to leave those countries enough resources to remain independent.?They sought only to punish the German and Japanese leaders who had committed?war crimes.?A war crime is a violation of internationally accepted practices related to waging war.Roosevelt made his statement shortly after returning from Yalta, a Soviet city on the Black Sea, where he had met with Churchill and Joseph Stalin.?At Yalta, the Allies began discussing punishment for war criminals.?Five months later, at a meeting near Potsdam, Germany, the new president, Harry Truman, agreed with the other Allies on a plan.?They would give Nazi war criminals fair and open trials.The trials took place at Nuremberg, Germany, in front of an international military tribunal.?The judges and chief prosecutors of this?tribunal?or court, came from the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France.?The American prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, presented the opening statement of the trial:The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.?That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay [stop] the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason.—Robert H. Jackson, opening remarks, November 21, 1945The 22 defendants at the?Nuremberg War Crimes Trials?included leaders of the Nazi Party, the military, the SS, and the Gestapo.?The SS were the elite Nazi Party corps, most infamous for running the concentration camps.?The Gestapo were the secret police.?These leaders were charged not only with war crimes but also with crimes against humanity, such as persecution and extermination.?They all pleaded not guilty.?On October 1, 1946, twelve defendants were condemned to death by hanging, seven received prison terms, and three were acquitted.?Other trials followed.?Those convicted of war crimes included officials who ran concentration camps and doctors who carried out gruesome medical experiments on inmates.A separate tribunal met in Tokyo in 1946 to try Japanese war criminals.?The trial lasted more than two years and found 25 defendants guilty.?Sixteen received life sentences, and two received lesser sentences.?Seven were sentenced to death by hanging, including Hideki Tojo, Japan’s leader for much of the war.From Enemies to Allies:?Rebuilding Germany and Japan?The Allies also set out to restructure Germany and Japan after the war.?At Yalta, they had decided to divide Germany into four military occupation zones, one each for the United States, the USSR, France, and Britain.?Although Berlin lay entirely within the Soviet zone, it also was divided in four parts—one for each occupying power.During the war, Allied bombers had destroyed many German cities.?As a result, many Germans continued to suffer from famine and disease.?At first, the United States did little to help rebuild Germany.?It was more concerned with dismantling German factories to eliminate any war-making capacity.?Only later would American policy focus on restoring Germany’s economic health.Click to read captionThe Allies took a different approach to postwar Japan.?They put an American general, Douglas MacArthur, in charge of the country.?Allied soldiers occupied Japan, but they did not control the country directly as they did in Germany.?Instead, the Japanese government carried out the political reforms that MacArthur and his staff prescribed.After dissolving Japan's empire and disbanding its military, the Allies worked to bring democracy to Japan.?Officials under MacArthur prepared a new constitution.?It set up a parliamentary government, based on the British model, with a strong legislature and an independent judiciary.?The emperor would only have ceremonial powers.?Women as well as men could elect representatives to the parliament, and a lengthy bill of rights ensured civil and political liberties.?The constitution also stated that “the Japanese people forever renounce war .?.?.?and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.”At first, as in Germany, the United States sought to weaken Japan’s industrial economy.?By 1948, however, U.S. officials had decided to promote economic growth.?Japan began the difficult task of rebuilding its ruined cities.?In 1951, Japan, the United States, and 47 other countries signed a peace treaty.?The treaty restored Japan to full?sovereignty, or independent authority.4. Americans Adjust to Postwar LifeThe GI Bill provided many benefits to war veterans. It paid up to $500 a year for college costs, enough to cover full tuition at many schools. It paid unemployment compensation of $20 a week for up to a year. It also offered housing loans up to $2,000. These loans led to a real estate boom that generated new jobs. Click to read captionAfter World War I, the mass cancellation of government contracts had thrown many Americans out of work. Demobilization of millions of soldiers made the unemployment problem even worse. After World War II, American leaders took steps to try to ease the difficult transition from a wartime economy to a peacetime economy.From Soldiers to Civilians: The Impact of the GI Bill In September 1942, three years before the end of the war, President Roosevelt was already planning for the peace. In a radio broadcast heard by American soldiers abroad, Roosevelt spoke of the economic crisis that followed World War I. He promised, “When you come home, we do not propose to involve you, as last time, in a domestic economic mess of our own making.”One year later, Roosevelt asked Congress to pass the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, better known as the GI Bill of Rights. This bill provided federal funds to help returning GIs make the transition to civilian life. Those funds would make it easier for many war veterans to continue their education and to buy a home. Congress passed the GI Bill by unanimous vote in the spring of 1944.Five months after the war ended, the armed services had released 8.5 million men and women from duty. Several million more came home in the next year. Many veterans took advantage of the GI Bill to enhance their prospects in civilian life. With the bill’s help, some 2.3 million veterans attended college and 7 million received vocational or on-the-job training. The middle class expanded, as veterans became doctors, lawyers, teachers, and other professionals.Veterans also took advantage of low-interest federal loans to buy homes. By 1955, the government had granted 4.3 million home loans through the GI Bill. These loans enabled millions of Americans to move out of central cities into outlying neighborhoods. Instead of being renters, they became homeowners.The GI Bill had other benefits. Returning veterans could receive unemployment compensation. They could also take out cheap federal loans to start farms or businesses. The effect of this legislation was not limited to the individuals it helped. As one veteran pointed out, the GI Bill also helped transform society:“I’m not sure whether I could ever have gone to college without the GI Bill . . . It set a whole new standard of improved education for a large number of people, a whole new standard of improved housing . . . I think the GI Bill gave the whole country an upward boost economically and in every other way.”—Ex-GI Don Condren, quoted in an interview in The Homefront: America During World War II, 1984African Americans Seek New Opportunities The GI Bill raised the expectations of all GIs, including African Americans. Shortly after the bill became law, the National Urban League predicted that returning black GIs would want “jobs, opportunities to complete their education, a chance to go into business, and the privilege of sharing completely in the future development and prosperity of the nation.”Not all African American GIs were able to make full use of the GI Bill. Discrimination often prevented African American veterans from buying a home, even if they had the money. Segregation kept them out of many colleges. Still, in the years following the war, many African Americans did become homeowners through the GI Bill. Thousands more received a college education, mainly by attending historically black institutions.The end of the war did not stop the migration of African Americans from the South. Returning veterans seemed especially eager to leave. By 1947, some 75,000 black GIs had left the South in search of jobs and a better life. A total of 2.5 million black Americans migrated from the region in the 1940s and 1950s.In general, the lives of African Americans did improve in the postwar years. From 1947 to 1952, the median income, or average pay, for nonwhite families rose 45 percent. Politically, though, the picture was more mixed. In national elections, most African Americans backed Truman, who in turn supported progress in the area of civil rights. In the South, however, discriminatory state regulations kept many African Americans from voting.From 1940 to 1944, the number of women in the workforce jumped 37 percent, to more than 19 million. That figure declined after the war, but not to prewar levels. Then it begana steady climb. This upward trend signifies a strong economy and a shift in attitudes.Click to read captionThe Demobilization of Women: From Factory Jobs to the Service Sector By 1947, nearly all war industries had been shut down. The women who had stepped forward to work in shipyards, aircraft plants, and other war-related jobs had received their last paychecks. At the same time, millions of GIs had returned from the war. This set up a potential conflict, pitting men and women against each other for the same jobs.In the postwar period, most female workers felt a duty to step aside for men. They had been told throughout the war that their jobs were temporary. Yet many women enjoyed the independence and self-esteem that came from holding a paying job, and they wanted to keep working. “They are the women,” a reporter commented, “who feel that if they are good enough to serve in a crisis they deserve a chance to earn a living in peacetime.”They did earn a living, but not in heavy industry. Those jobs went mainly to men. Instead, many women moved into jobs in the booming service sector, the segment of the economy that does not produce goods. They became teachers, nurses, librarians, bank tellers, and social workers. At these jobs, they earned, on average, just over half of what men earned. For the most part, though, women accepted their new roles and economic status. ................
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