Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II, 1941-45
Big Idea: The involvement of the United States in World War II, while opposed by many
Americans prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, vaulted the United States into global political
and military prominence and transformed both American society and the relationship between
the United States and the rest of the world.
Unit Description: This unit concentrates on the history of World War II. Attempting to give the
war an ideological meaning and to convince the American public that it had to be prepared,
Roosevelt linked the war’s meaning with the freedoms that Americans had taken for granted for
years. The unit looks at FDR’s foreign policy in Latin America, the road leading up to the
European and Pacific wars, and America’s reluctance to intervene until Pearl Harbor. However,
not everyone was an isolationist. In The American Century Henry Luce advocated a more
influential leadership role for America. Next, the war on the home front is examined. Americans
mobilized quickly, and business and labor worked to make America an “arsenal of democracy”
while the Office of War Information promoted the Four Freedoms to the American public. The
intellectual debates about how the postwar world might define freedom are examined through
the writings of Luce, Henry Wallace, Friedrich Hayek, and FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights.
Ethnic minorities’ experiences during the war were varied. While Native and MexicanAmericans had some opportunities, Japanese-Americans were interned during the war, held as
criminals without evidence or due process. Blacks saw the war as an opportunity to win two
victories, one abroad and one at home. The modern civil rights movement gets its start with the
war, particularly through the work of A. Philip Randolph and through the support of the new
liberalism. The war ends with the dawn of the atomic age, which introduced a technology that
remains controversial to this day. Preparing for the postwar world, meetings at Bretton Woods
and Dunbarton Oaks laid the foundation for a new economic order and international political
structure.
Points for Discussion:
 What led to American involvement during WWII? Was war between the US and Japan
(or Germany) inevitable?
 How did the US effectively mobilize its resources to fight wars in two separate
hemispheres? How did this end the Depression?
 Describe the economic dislocations, social pressures and economic growth spurred by
war that led to a great degree of migration within the United States, as well as migration
to the United States from elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere.
 Analzye the debates about America’s role in the world and evaluate the wide variety of
views and arguments between interventionists and isolationists.
 What impact did the war have on the home front? Be sure to address women, AfricanAmericans, Indians, Mexican-Americans and Japanese-Americans?
 What made World War II a “total war?” How did the Allies win? Be sure to address
political, military, industrial, technological and ideological factors.
 TWE was the Constitution stretched, bent or broken during the war?
 TWE was Truman justified in dropping the bomb(s) on Japan?
 How did the war shape the postwar world? What was America’s new global role and
what led to it?
 TWE were American values upheld at home and abroad during the war?
Key Terms by Historical Theme:
(America in the World - WOR): Good Neighbor policy, Pan-American conferences, Soviet Union
recognized, independence for Philippines, reciprocal trade agreements, Japanese invasion of
Manchuria, Stimson Doctrine, fascism, Italian Fascist party, Benito Mussolini, Ethiopia,
German Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler, Axis Powers, Spanish Civil War, Francisco Franco, Rhineland,
Sudetenland, Munich, appeasement, Poland; blitzkrieg, isolationism, Nye Committee, Neutrality
Acts, America First Committee, Charles Lindbergh, Quarantine speech, cash and carry, Selective
Training and Service Act (1940), destroyer-for-bases deal, FDR: third term, Wendell Willkie,
Four Freedoms speech, Lend-Lease (1941), Atlantic Charter, escort convoys, oil and steel
embargo, Pearl Harbor, Battle of the Atlantic, strategic bombing, Dwight Eisenhower, D-Day,
Holocaust, island hopping, Battle of Midway, Douglas MacArthur, kamikaze attacks, J. Robert
Oppenheimer, atomic bomb, Hiroshima; Nagasaki, Big Three, Casablanca Conference,
unconditional surrender, Tehran,; Yalta; Potsdam, United Nations
(Work, Exchange, Technology - WXT, Politics and Power - POL)
War Production Board, Office of Price Administration, government spending, debt, role of large
corporations, research and development, Manhattan Project, Office of War Information
(Migration and Settlement - MIG, POL)
Wartime migration, civil rights; “Double V”, executive order on jobs, Smith v Allwright,
Braceros program, Japanese Interment, Korematsu v U.S., Rosie the Riveter, wartime
solidarity, election of 1944, Harry S Truman