The Second World War At Home and Abroad
Overview
• Overcoming isolationism
• Mobilizing the Economy
• Propaganda
• Women and ethnic minorities
• The American century
Isolationism
• 1920s: withdrawal from League of Nations
and nativism
• ‘Good Neighbour’ Policy:
-Non-intervention in Latin America (PanAmerican Conference 1933)
-Official recognition of Soviet Russia (1933)
• Peace and Disarmament:
-Washington Armaments Conference (1921)
-Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928)
• Neutrality Acts (1935, 1937)
Occupation and Conquest in Asia and
Europe
• Japanese invasion of Manchuria (19311932)
• Hitler becomes fuhrer of Germany
(1933-1934)
• Mussolini’s Italy invades Ethiopia
(1935)
• Spanish Civil War (1936-39)
• Hitler occupies Rhineland (1936)
• Axis (1937)
• Anschluss (Austria),invasion of
Sudetenland,annexation of
Czechoslovakia, invasion of Poland
(1938-1939)
• Mussolini invades Albania
Nanking, December 1937: Japanese massacre 300,000 Chinese
US attitudes toward intervention
OPPOSITION
SUPPORT
• WWI entered for profit
• Worldwide business interests
• Preserve overseas markets
• Threat to national security
• Antagonism to both British
Empire and communism
• ‘Toothless’ diplomacy
• Growing peace movement
• FDR publicity campaigns
• Insulation from foreign war
• Interventionist movement
US Moves Towards Intervention
•Congress amends Neutrality Act (1939)
•peacetime draft (1940)
•Naval military aid in the Atlantic (1940)
•FDR claims US is ‘arsenal of democracy’ (1941)
•Congress passes the Lend-Lease Bill (1941)
•Atlantic Charter in Churchill/FDR meet (1941)
•Attack on Pearl Harbour December 7th
Henry Luce’s The American Century
(1941)
In the filed of national policy, the fundamental
trouble with America has been, and is, that whereas
their national became in the C20th the most
powerful and most vital nation in the world,
nevertheless
Americans
were
unable
to
accommodate themselves spiritually and practically
to that fact. Hence they have failed to play their
part as a world power….And the cure is this: to
accept wholeheartedly our duty and opportunity as
the most powerful and vital nation in the world and
in consequence to exert upon the world the full
impact of our influence, for such purposes as we
see fit and by such means as we see it.
http://library.sc.edu/mirc/playVideo.html?i=37
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK8gYGg0dkE
Mobilization
• Federal workers rise from 1 million
to 4 million and unemployment rate
drops from 14% to 2%
• Gross national product rises from
$91 billion to $214 billion during the
war
• Federal expenditure twice the
combined total of previous 150 years
• By end of war 200 biggest
manufacturing companies account
for almost half of US assets
• US factories produce a ship every
day and plane every 5 minutes in
1944
• Just under 2 million people move to
California to undertake defence jobs;
10% of all defence contracts
Effects of Mobilization
• Rescue from the Great Depression
• Opportunity for prosperity/better living
• Consolidation of big business over US
• Reinvigoration of American South/West
• Debate over New Deal and free enterprise
Men at War
• Peacetime army 140,000.
• Men turned away from military recruitment
during Depression
• 16 million Americans fought in the military
during the war (men and women); 416,000
dead; over 600,000 wounded
• 135,000 killed from June 6, 1944 to VE Day.
• 106,000 killed in Pacific
• Desegregation of military 1948
Women at War: 400,000
• Women serving with the American military WW2,
including
• Army - 150,000
• Navy - 100,000
• Marines - 25,000
• Coast Guard - 15,000
• Air Force – 1,500
• Army and Navy Nurse Corps - 74,000
• More than 1,000 women served as pilots associated
with the US Air Force in the WASP (Women
Airforce Service Pilots) but were considered civil
service workers, and weren't recognized for their
military service until the 1970s.
Disasters and Victories
American and Philippine soldiers on the Death March, April, 1942;
MacArthur returns, October 20, 1944. Wainwright’s surrender of 70,000 US
troops to the Japanese was largest US surrender in its history.
POWs 1943, Pacific Theater
The Home Front
• Federal agencies:
-War Production Board
-War Manpower Commission
-Office of Price Administration
• 1943: Congress abolish WPA, NYA and CCC
• NWLB, 1942: Unions strengthened.
Organized labor expanded from 10.5 million
members in 1941 to 14.75 million in 1945
• Office of War Information (OWI) formed
1942
• Economic Bill of Rights thwarted but GI Bill
passed by Congress in 1944
Winning Hearts and Minds
• June 1942 an executive order created the
Office of War Information (OWI) headed
by Elmer Davis. Its role was threefold:
– to distribute all govt. news releases to the
press
– serve as a liaison between press and
government
– Supervise the dissemination of
information and propaganda through the
media, notably motion pictures and radio.
•
Armed forces engaged in own film divisions
•
90% of Disney’s cartoons were war related
•
Warner Bros. and Private SNAFU:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FmhPYYEAA&bpctr=1392659883
• Wonder Woman, b. Dec 1941; Norman Rockwell
Rosie, 1943
Women on Home Front during
WWII
• The percentage of American women who worked
outside the home at paying work increased from
25% to 36% during the war
• Women’s employment -increases by 140% in
manufacturing
-increases by 600% in auto industry
• Minority women benefited from the June, 1941,
Executive Order 8802
• 19 million women worked outside home by 1945
• 2 million women in defence jobs
Migration West
•
•
•
•
•
•
Table 4: Population Growth in Washington, Oregon, and California, 1940-1945
(populations in millions)
1940
Washington
Oregon
California
Total 9.8
1.7
1.1
7.0
10.3
1941
1.8
1.1
7.4
11.0
1942
1.9
1.1
8.0
11.8
1943
1944
2.1
1.2
8.5
12.4
2.1
1.3
9.0
13.1
1945
2.3
1.3
9.5
33.7%
overall change
35.3%
18.2%
35.7%
Ethnic Minorities during WWII
• During wartime Seattle’s black
population goes from 4,000 to
40,000
• March on Washington
Movement (1941); Membership
in NAACP goes from 50, 000 to
450,000 during wartime
• Creation of the Bracero
Program in 1942 to import
Mexican migrant labour into
US
• ‘Zoot Suit’ riots in Los Angeles
in 1943; sailors, soldiers and
civilians attack Latin
Americans
Japanese Internment
• Executive Order 9066 in 1942:
removal of Japanese
Americans to internment
camps
• Over 60% of internees are US
citizens
• Over 100,000 removed from
homes and deprived of due
process or legal recourse
• Only in 1983 does the
government apologize for
internment policy; $20,000
compensation to surviving
internees
Propaganda
End of the War?
•
FDR re-elected for fourth term in
1944; dies on April 12 1945;
replaced by VP Truman
•
Massive American casualties
sustained at Battles in Iwo Jima
and Okinawa
•
Two atomic bombs dropped on
Japan: Hiroshima on July 26 1945
and Nagasaki on August 9 1945
•
Britain, Russia and USA decide
fate of postwar world at Tehran
(1943) and Yalta (1945)
•
Formation of United Nations and
Security Council; also World Bank
and IMF
American POWs in Japan
Americans’ first images of the
Holocaust
America and the Holocaust
US limits immigration
Widespread anti-Semitism
Liberation of Death Camps
UNRRA
US slow to admit DPs (displaced persons)
or grant citizenship
• UNNRA and IRO attacked by US press
and Republican politicians
•
•
•
•
•
The Atomic Bomb
• Research and development
throughout WWII as the
Manhattan Project
• Einstein, Roosevelt and
Oppenheimer involved in
bringing project to the US
• 70,000 killed on first impact
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki;
subsequent radiation death
tolls 135,000 (H) and 80K (N)
• Continuation of
dehumanisation of Japanese
and killing of civilians
during WWII
• Justified by scientific naivety
and fear of greater casualties;
how have these dated?
G.I Bill of Rights
•
•
•
•
Serviceman’s Readjustment Act 1944.
Honorable discharged veterans with 90+ days of active service
“The great democratizer”
Mortgages, loans for businesses/farms, vocational and college
tuition, 1 year unemployment compensation
• Limited for black veterans and women
Postwar USA
• Atomic bomb and Soviet presence in Europe
building blocks of Cold War
• Tensions with Britain over colonial
independence resurface in the 1950s
• By end of war US is out of Depression and
isolation; postwar prosperity and global
responsibilities
• Colossal social impact of WWII; race, gender,
politics e.g. Birth of Civil Rights Movement