Part II america in world war II

During the Great Depression, most Americans were too busy with the troubles facing the United States to worry about what was going on elsewhere. But the depression did not hurt the United States alone. Conditions in Europe rapidly deteriorated in the 1930s, every year seemed to bring a new war or a threat of war somewhere in the world. Nations built more tanks, warships and military aircraft.

Leaders in the United States knew what was happening in Europe and Asia but did not want to get involved. Americans had very strong feelings against being drawn into another war. During the 1930s they passed three neutrality acts. Their objective was to prevent, at almost any cost, the involvement of the United States in a non-American war. The first act, passed in 1935, said that the President, after announcing that there was a state of war, had the power to stop shipments of arms to countries at war. It also warned Americans that if they traveled on ships belonging to countries at war, they did so at their own risk. The second act, passed in 1936, made it illegal to make loans or to extend credit to countries at war. The third act that came in 1937 gave the President the power to name goods other than arms that could not be shipped to countries at war. It also made it illegal to travel on ships of countries at war.

While the United States was trying to avoid war, Japan, Italy, and Germany went ahead with their plans to take over more territory. As early as 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria. Then in 1937, Japan began a major war against China. The Japanese army took over large areas of land and many major Chinese cities.

Germany began its aggression in 1938 when the German army occupied Austria, which then became a part of Germany. Hitler's goal was to unite all German-speaking people into one nation. The same year, Hitler demanded that the Sudetenland, the part of Czechoslovakia which had a German-speaking population, be made part of Germany.

In 1939, Germany signed a treaty with the Soviet Union in which they agreed not to attack each other. This left Germany free to attack Poland. On September 1, 1939, the Germans launched a blitzkrieg, or lightning war, against Poland. By the summer of 1940 Hitler’s armies had overrun most of Western Europe. Denmark and Norway were invaded in April, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg fell in May, France sued for peace in June. Only Britain – exhausted and short of weapons – still defied them.

By 1939 Americans had become alarmed at the German, Italian, and Japanese victories. With Hitler the master of Europe, and his ally, Japan becoming ever stronger in Asia, Americans saw the dangerous position of the United States, sandwiched between the two. On September 8, President Roosevelt asked Congress to allow the United States to ship arms to countries at war. Two months later, the Neutrality Act of 1939 was passed, repealing part of the 1935 act. It allowed the United States to supply arms to countries at war. The United States and Great Britain worked out an agreement the following year. In it the United States agreed to give Great Britain 50 destroyers. In return, Great Britain gave the United States the right to lease certain British-controlled naval and air bases in the Caribbean.

The United States also began to build up its own armed forces. President Roosevelt and the Congress wanted the country to be ready in case of enemy attack. To make sure there were enough soldiers, the Congress passed a bill in September 1940 creating the first peacetime draft in the history of the United States. The American army which had only 170,000 soldiers in 1939 soon grew in over 1 million.

In the election of 1940 the Democrats nominated Roosevelt to run for presidency, and he easily won the election. For the first time in American history a president was elected to a third term. In his speech after the election Roosevelt called on Americans to become the “arsenal of democracy” – remaining out of the war but giving the British what they needed to fight. To implement this idea he suggested a policy he called Lend-Lease. It allowed the President to transfer, lease, exchange, or sell arms or other war supplies to any country he felt was important to the American security. In March 1941, the Lend-Lease Act was passed, and American food and aircraft crossed the Atlantic in large quantities. They played a vital part in helping Britain to continue to fight against Hitler. Not long after the unexpected German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, lend-lease aid scheme was used to send aid to the Russians, too.

While the United States was trying to help Great Britain, the Japanese were on the move in Asia and the Pacific. At about the same time, Japan formed a military and economic alliance with Germany and Italy. The three countries became known as the Axis Powers.

Americans had long been alarmed by the growing power of Japan.They saw it as a threat to both peace in Asia and to American trading interests. Ever since the 1937 attack on China the US had been reducing its exports to Japan of goods that were useful in war. In July 1941, when Japan occupied the French colony of Indochina, the US stopped all shipments of oil to Japan. Japan faced disaster, as it imported 80 percent of its oil from the USA.

On December 7, 1941, Japanese naval and air forces attacked the large American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. They caught the American forces there completely by surprise. Japanese planes sank or damaged 19 warships at Pearl Harbor and destroyed some 175 planes. More than 2,000 sailors and soldiers were killed, and over 1,000 people were wounded. The Congress declared war on Japan the next day. Three days later, when Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, the Congress recognized a state of war with those nations as well.

On the same day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they also attacked the Philippines, Guam, Midway Island, and Hong Kong. On December 8, they invaded Malaya and Thailand. While the Japanese were pushing forward in the Far East, other Axis forces were making gains in Europe and Africa. In late June, the Germans broke their 1939 treaty with the Soviet Union and invaded that country. By the middle of November, the Germans were outside the Soviet capital of Moscow.

Even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States government had been taking steps to ready the American economy for war. Success on the battlefield hinged on the rapid conversion of American industry from producing consumer goods to making planes, ships and tanks. The war brought an end to the Great Depression. The labor problem in the war years was too few workers, not too few jobs. Three years after the United States entered the war, American factories were making more products than those of all the Axis countries. American-built airplanes, ships, tanks, helmets, rifles, and munitions went to all the Allies. In the factories across the country millions of women replaced men who were in the service.

Once the country was in the war, agencies were set up to order the economy and to see that war materials were produced. One of them was Office of Price Administration (OPA), which established rent ceiling and maximum prices on thousands of commodities, as the government became concerned about the inflation. The OPA also began rationing, or setting limits on the amount of certain goods people could buy. The rationing program began in 1941 with tires and eventually expanded to include gasoline, shoes, and foodstuffs.

The success of the Axis countries did more than make Americans prepare for war. It also led many Americans to fear and hate people from Japan who were living in the United States. More than 100,000 Japanese Americans lived on the West Coast of the United States. Many people there, some of them public officials, were afraid that the Japanese Americans would help Japan if it attacked the United States. These people began to demand that people of Japanese background be moved from the West Coast. In February 1942, President Roosevelt ordered the army to move some 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry from their homes to relocation centers (camps) in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah, Arkansas, and Idaho. They had to sell their homes and belongings, often at a loss. A great many of those relocated were American citizens.

In November 1942, the Soviet army made one of their most important moves on the eastern front. The Soviet city of Stalingrad had been under attack by the Germans since the summer. No matter what the Germans did, they could not drive the Soviet forces out of the city. Instead, the Soviet troops attacked the Germans and surrounded the entire German Sixth Army. It surrendered in February 1943. This greatly weakened the position of the German forces on the eastern front. The Soviet Union pressed the United States and Great Britain to open a second front, hoping it would force the Germans to redistribute their troops that were currently fighting against the USSR in the east. This would take some of the pressure off the Soviet army. But the British, remembering the heavy casualties in France during World War I, were reluctant to send their troops into Europe, and an invasion across the English Channel was postponed several times until June 1944. In the interim, British and American forces drove the Germans out of North Africa and invaded Sicily and Italy while Soviet troops pushed westwards into Eastern Europe.

Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin known as the Big Three, met for the first time at the Teheran Conference in November 1943. They agreed that the cross-Channel invasion would take place in the following spring along with the Russian offensive in the east. This decision meant that while the British and American forces controled Western Europe, Soviet troops would liberate Eastern Europe and would probably remain in control there when the war ended. The three leaders also discussed postwar Germany and the formation of a new international organization to replace the League of Nations but made no final decisions.

On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the second front was finally opened when American, British, Canadian, and free French forces stormed the beaches of Normandy in Operation Overlord. The invasion, led by General Eisenhower, involved 176,000 troops and was the largest amphibious, or water to land, operation of the war. The US had stored tons of supplies for the Normandy invasion. It was the main attack against Germany in the west and caught the Germans somewhat by surprise. After a short period, the Allied forces broke though German defenses and began moving inland toward Paris, which was liberated in August. At the same time, the Allies launched another invasion of southern France. By September, the German army was driven out of France end Belgium, but the Allied advance stalled late in the year because of lack of supplies.

Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met again in February 1945 in the Soviet town of Yalta. There they agreed to divide Germany into four zones of occupation, with France, Great Britain and the US in the west and the USSR in the east. Although entirely within the Russian zone, Berlin would be administered by all four powers. The leaders also agreed that eastern European countries that had been held by the Germans should hold elections to form new governments.

In 1944, presidential elections were held in the United States and Franklin Roosevelt was elected President for a fourth term. But the pressures of the office took their toll. Two months after his return from Yalta Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage while vacationing in Georgia (April 12, 1945). Few figures in US history have been so deeply mourned, and for a time the American people suffered from a sense of irreparable loss. It was left to Vice-President Harry Truman to bring the US to victory in Europe and against Japan.

The German defeat in the Battle of the Bulge (December 16 – January 16) allowed the Americans to cross the Rhine into Germany. At the same time the Soviet troops advanced from the east. By the end of April, Soviet and American troops met at the Elbe River. Most of Germany was in Allied hands, and Soviets had entered Berlin. Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker under the city on April 30, and the German military unconditionally surrendered on May 8, 1945.

The war against Japan was still being fought in the Pacific and the Far East. Americans there were joined by Allied soldiers from Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain. Through late 1943 and into 1944, the American and Allied forces advanced to Japan by “island hopping” – that is, they captured islands that were strategically important. The islands that were heavily defended often were not attacked, instead, American and Allied warships and planes kept them from getting supplies. In June, an enormous American task force won control of the important Mariana Islands. In October American troops returned to the Philippines and cut off Japan from its conquests in Southeast Asia. But Americans faced a difficult fight as the war moved closer to the Japanese islands. The battle of Iwo Jima (February – jMarch 1945) cost U.S. marines more than 20,000 casualties. During the three-month battle for Okinawa (April – June 1945) only 350 miles from Japan, 12,000 Americans were killed and 36, 000 wounded. Attacks by Japanese suicide planes, the kamikaze, caused the heaviest damage ever to the U.S. Navy. The invasion of Japan itself, which was being planned for 1945, would mean even greater losses, perhaps as many as a million men, according to some estimates. These circumstances were the context in which the decision to use the atomic bomb was made. The result of a scientific, technical, and industrial program known as the Manhattan Project, the first atomic bomb was successfully tested in Alamogordo, New Mexico, in July 1945. The decision to use an atomic bomb has long been and continues to be controversial. Historians argue that by the summer of 1945, Japan was on the verge of collapse, and the continued air attacks would have led to surrender. Some claim that the real reason the bombs were used was as a show of American strength for the Soviet Union. Others maintain that racism was a factor, insisting that a bomb would never have been used against Germany.

In July 1945, President Truman called upon the Japanese government to surrender or face “prompt and utter destruction.” The Japanese turned down the offer to surrender. President Truman then gave the order to drop an atomic bomb. The bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. This city was an important center for army supplies, shipbuilding, and railroad yards. The Japanese government, however still would not surrender. Three days later, another atomic bomb was dropped, this time on the city of Nagasaki, an important industrial center. Both cities were devastated and nearly 200,000 civilians were killed. On August 14, 1945, the government of Japan agreed to surrender thus ending World War II. On September 2, known as V-J Day, the formal surrender was signed on board the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

Previously the heads of the U.S., British and Soviet governments had met at Potsdam, a suburb outside Berlin, from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to discuss operations against Japan, the peace settlement in Europe and a policy for the future Germany. The conference agreed on the need to assist in the reeducation of a German generation reared under Nazism and in the restoration of democratic political life in the country. The conference also discussed reparation claims against Germany, agreed to the trial of Nazi leaders accused of crimes against humanity, and provided for the removal of industrial plants and property by the Soviet Union.

In November 1945 at Nuremberg, Germany, the criminal trials of Nazi leaders took place. Before a group of distinguished jurists from Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States the Nazis were accused not only of plotting and waging an aggressive war but also of violating the laws of war and of humanity in the systematic genocide of different peoples, known as the Holocaust. The trials lasted more than 10 months and resulted in the conviction of all but three of the accused.

One of the most far-reaching decisions concerning the shape of the post-war world took place on April 25, 1945, with the war in Europe in its final days. Delegates from 50 countries met in San Francisco to create the United Nations. The structure of the new international organization, whose charter was signed in June 1945, included the General Assembly, in which each member had a vote. Responsibility for maintaining peace fell to the Security Council, in which the five permanent members – China, France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States – have veto power. In addition, the charter provided for a number of agencies and the U.N. umbrella, such as the International Court of Justice and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

In contrast to its rejection of U.S. membership in the League of Nations after World War II, The American Senate promptly ratified the U.N. Charter. This action confirmed the end of the spirit of isolationism as a dominating element in American foreign policy. It signaled to the world that the United States intended to play a major role in international affairs.

DISCUSSION

1. How can you describe the situation in Europe in the 1930s?

2. What did most Americans think of being involved into another European war? What was the objective of the neutrality acts passed in the 1930s?

3. What conflicts was Japan involved into in the 1930s?

4. What actions did Germany undertake in order to unite all German-speaking people into one nation? How did the situation in Europe develop in 1938-1939?

5. When did Americans become alarmed by the situation in Europe?

6. What was the agreement between Great Britain and the United States signed in 1939?

7. When was the first American peacetime draft started?

8. What was the objective of the Lend-Lease policy suggested by Roosevelt?

9. What countries formed the Axis Powers?

10. Speak about American-Japanese relations before Pearl Harbor. When did the Pearl Harbor attack take place?

11. When did the Germans attack the Soviet Union?

12. How did entering the war effect American economy?

13. What were the functions of OPA?

14. What was the attitude to Japanese Americans in the USA during World War II?

15. When did the battle of Stalingrad take place?

16. Why were the British reluctant to open the second front?

17. What decisions were made by the Big Three in Teheran in November 1943?

18. When was the second front opened? Speak about Operation Overlord.

19. What were the agreements achieved in Yalta in 1945?

20. How many times was Franklin Roosevelt elected President?

21. Who took the presidency after Roosevelt’s death?

22. When did American and Soviet troops meet at the Elbe River?

23. When did Germany surrender?

24. What was the tactics of the Allies in the Pacific?

25. How did Americans explain their decision to use the atomic bomb?

26. Why did they pick up the cities of Heroshima and Nagasaki?

27. When did Japan surrender?

28. When did the Potsdam conference take place?

29. What do we learn from the text about the Nuremberg criminal trials?

30. When was the United Nations Organization established? Speak about its structure.

MATCH THE TERMS WITH THEIR DEFINITIONS

1. Allies

2. Axis powers

3. blitzkrieg

4. fascism

5. genocide

6. kamikaze

7. Lend-Lease

8. Manhattan project

9. United Nations (UN)

1. in World War II, the material aid in the form of munitions, tools, food, etc., granted under specific conditions to foreign countries whose defense was deemed vital to the defense of the USA

2. the US Army project begun in 1942 to research and develop an atomic bomb to be used in warfare

3. the countries aligned against the Allies in the World War II, originally Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and later including Japan

4. the deliberate and systematic extermination of a group of people

5. sudden, swift, large-scale offensive warfare intended to win a quick victory

6. the nations associated against the Axis in World War II, especially Great Britain, Soviet Union and the United States

7. an international organization, formed in San-Francisco in 1945, pledged to promote world peace and security, maintain treaty obligations and the observance of international law

8. a Japanese suicide pilot who crashed bomb-laden planes into American ships in World War II

9. a system of government characterized by a rigid one-party dictatorship, the forcible suppression of opposition, private enterprise under centralized government control, a belligerent nationalism, racism, militarism, etc.