The Roots of War
Treaty of Versailles, 1918
• Created a set of small new nations in Eastern
Europe = vulnerable to aggression from larger
neighbors (Germany & Soviet Union)
• Italy & Japan = failed to recognize their
stature as world powers
• Germany = betrayed (Stab in the back myth)
rather than defeated (this leads to the
unconditional surrender demand), harsh war
reparations and loss of lands
1920’s & 30’s
• Economic crisis and political instability fueled
the rise of right-wing dictatorships that
offered territorial expansion by military
conquest as way to redress old rivalries,
dominate trade, and gain access to raw
materials (Hitler, Germany; Mussolini, Italy;
Franco, Spain; Stalin, Russia; Emperor
Hirohito, Japan)
Japanese Nationalism
• Wanted to expel Europeans and Americans from Asia
and create a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
(Asia controlled by Japanese)
• Japanese ambition in Asia was to create a Pan-Asian
empire with Japan at the center as an imperial power
and a defensive ring of 500 miles to protect the
homeland.
• Most of Japanese territorial gains would be in China,
Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands
• Earliest national aggression in WWII was when Japan
invaded Manchuria in 1931
• In 1937 Japan launched a brutal invasion of China
European Nationalism
• Expansion of territories through military
aggression
• Italy: conquest of Ethiopia in 1935 & intervention
in Spain in support of Gen. Franco
• Germany: Hitler made himself the German
Fuhrer, 1934 (absolute leader)
• Thousand Year Reich – combined historic
German interest in eastward expansion with
tradition of German racial superiority
• Lebensraum (living space) created by taking land
from the Russian Slavic peoples
European Nationalism
• Genocide (systematic murder) of the Jewish
people of Europe
• Nuremburg Laws, 1935 denied civil rights to Jews
• NAZI government took Jewish property and
excluded Jews from most jobs
• Concentration Camps were prisons created by
the Nazis to punish political dissidents, Jews,
Gypsies, homosexuals, and other ethnic groups
considered undesirable
• The camps evolved into harsh labor camps and
finally into extermination camps
Rome-Berlin Axis, 1936
• Alliance between Germany & Italy
• Grew into the Tripartite Act, 1940 which
included Japan
• Alliance of Germany, Italy, and Japan became
known as the Axis Powers (aggressor nations)
Hitler’s War in Europe
Pre-War territorial expansion
• 1936 – re-occupied the German Rhineland,
violated terms of Versailles by re-militarizing
Germany
• 1938 – annexed (added) Austria
• Sept. 1938 – Munich Agreement = forced
Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland to
Germany
• March 1939 – Germany occupied the majority
of Czechoslovakia
German invasion of Poland
• Sept. 1, 1939 triggered start of WWII in Europe
• Blitzkrieg invasion “lightening war” included
armored divisions with tanks and motorized
infantry rapidly seized control of territory (new
form of warfare which made trench warfare of
WWI obsolete)
• Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, 1939 – cleared
the way for Hitler’s invasion of Poland with
Germany & Russia splitting the country between
them
War in Europe: 1939-1941
• May 1940 -German invasion of Denmark & Norway to
the North
• May & June 1940 – German invasion of Netherlands,
Belgium, and France to the West
• Defeat of France led to the narrow escape of British
soldiers from the beach at Dunkirk back to England
• Vichy French (Pro-Nazi) government established under
French Gen. Marshall Petain to govern southern France
during the war
• General Charles de Gaul – continued to lead the
French forces
War in Europe: 1939-1941
• Summer of 1940 –German aerial attack of Great Britain (Battle
of Britain)
• Failed to subdue Great Britain who would continue the war
against Germany
• May 1941 –Germany enlisted Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria as
allies and conquered Yugoslavia and Greece to the South in the
Balkans
• June 1941 = unable to knock Great Britain out of the war, Hitler
invaded the Soviet Union in the East
• Invasion caught Soviets off-guard due to the non-aggression pact
• Heavy losses by the Soviets coupled with deep penetration of
German, Italian, and Rumanian forces into the Soviet Union led
to the near capture of Moscow and other strategic cities
American Isolationism
Americans didn’t want foreign wars
(Isolationism)
• People who opposed intervention in the war
considered themselves realists
• Emotional appeal of neutrality came from
disillusionment with WWI which failed to make
the world safe for democracy
• Hitler’s breaching of the Treaty of Versailles on
multiple occasions furthered this disillusionment
• Opponents of the war did want the US to protect
its traditional spheres of interest in Latin
America & the Pacific
Edging Toward Intervention
• The “Destroyer deal” with Great Britain – trade of fifty old
destroyers for the use of bases on British territories in
Caribbean, Bermuda, and Newfoundland.
• Election of 1940: FDR became the first president in history
to run for a 3rd term.
• FDR won the election with 55% of the votes – defeated
Republican Wendell Wilkie
• FDR pledged no American would fight in a foreign war
• Privately, Roosevelt knew U.S. would enter the war
The Brink of War
• Lend-Lease Program (1941): allowed Britain to “borrow”
military equipment for the duration of the war
• Opposition to the program: America First Committee –
claimed the lend-lease would allow the president to declare
anything a “defense articles.”
• FDR’s undeclared war: instructed U.S. navy to report German
submarine sightings to the British
• “shoot on sight” policy – U.S. ships should attack German
subs when they make contact
• U.S. naval escort of British convoys to within 400 miles of
Great Britain
• Germany responded by sinking 2 U.S. destroyers killing 100
men.
The Brink of War
• The Atlantic Charter: August 1941, provided a political
umbrella for American involvement
• FDR & Winston Churchill (GB) agreed that the first priority
was to defeat Germany; Japan was secondary
• FDR wanted to eliminate Hitler without going to war if
possible
• U.S. decision to build a two-ocean navy (Atlantic & Pacific) –
decision antagonized Japan
• U.S. buildup would reduce Japanese naval strength
• U.S. was gradually restricting Japan’s vital imports of steal,
iron ore, and aluminum
The Brink of War
• July, 1941- Japan occupied French Indo-China. As a result,
Roosevelt froze Japanese assets in the U.S., blocked
petroleum shipments, and began U.S. buildup of forces in the
Philippines.
• Japanese objective: hoped by attacking American Pacific
bases they would shock the United States into letting Japan
have its way in Asia or at least time to create impenetrable
defenses in the central pacific.
• U.S. expected Japanese attacks in Southeast Asia.
The Brink of War
• December 7, 1941 – Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor: sank 8
battleships, 11 other warships, and killed 2,403 Americans.
• President Roosevelt’s speech; “a date that will live in infamy”
– U.S. declared war against Japan
• U.S. formally declares war on Japan on Dec. 8th, Germany
and Italy on Dec. 11th
• Germany & Italy declared war on the U.S. on Dec. 11th
Mobilizing for Victory
Organizing the Economy
• The war effort gave Americans a common
purpose that softened the divisions of region,
class, and national origin while calling attention
to continuing inequalities of race.
• War Manpower Commission: allocated workers
among vital industries and the military
• War Production Board: invested $17 billion for
new factories, $181 billion in war supply
contracts
Organizing the Economy
• Office of Price Administration (OPA) – fought
inflation with price controls and rationing of
vital war materials. This convinced Americans
to buy war bonds that financed half the war
spending
• Federal budget grew to $98 billion by 1945
and increased the national debt
Organizing the Economy
• Major industries transitioned from producing
consumer goods to building war machines
• These mass production techniques used to
build thousands of warplanes and tanks
• War-boom cities: developed due to war
production (e.g. San Diego)
The Enlistment of Science
• Office of Scientific Research and
Development: Vannevar Bush guided
spending on research and development which
set the pattern of massive federal support for
science that continued after the war.
• Manhattan Project: U.S. program to develop
an atomic bomb
The Enlistment of Science
• Physicist Robert Oppenheimer directed the
project to design a nuclear fission bomb at Los
Alamos
• 1st nuclear explosion on July 16,1945 –
Trinity site near Alamogordo, New Mexico
• Oppenheimer “Now I am become death,
destroyer of worlds”
Men & Women in the Military
• By 1945, 8.3 million men and women were on
active duty in the army and army air forces and
3.4 million in the Navy & Marine Corps.
• Total 350,000 women / 16 million men served:
292,000 killed / 100,000 prisoners / 671,000
wounded
• 25,000 Native Americans served (racially
integrated forces)
• Code talkers – Navajo Indians who’s language
was unknown to the Axis powers
African Americans
• Approximately 1 million served in the armed
services during the war
• Served in segregated (separate from white
soldiers) units – usually in in non-combat, menial
jobs
• Faced discrimination on and off the base
• All black units (761st tank battalion & 99th
pursuit squadron) earned distinguished records
for combat action.
• The war experience helped to invigorate postwar
efforts to achieve equal rights.
Japanese Americans
• Japanese Americans, unfairly suspected of being
possible traitors, in Hawaii and on the west coast
are rounded up and shipped to internment
camps.
• Despite severe prejudice back home, the 442nd
Infantry Regiment becomes the highest
decorated infantry regiment in the history of the
U.S. Army
• 8 Presidential Unit Citations
• 21 Medal of Honor winners
Women in the military
• Received mixed reactions by Americans
• Armed services tried to not change
established gender roles (primarily worked in
clerical jobs)
• Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) –
civilian auxiliary of U.S. Army Air Forces
• Women pilots ferried military aircraft across
the U.S., towed targets for anti-aircraft target
practice, tested new planes.
The War at Home
The New American Life
• Residents in war production cities – had to cope
with new workers (mostly unattached males,
young men waiting for their draft call, and older
men without their families)
• Fear of sexually transmitted diseases
• Lives put in fast forward: increase in marriages;
1.2 million
• Mixed effects on children: “latchkey kids” of
working mothers had to fend for themselves,
middle class kids worked to support the war
effort (fund raisers, salvage drives)
The New American Life
• Government censorship to control war
images and use of propaganda
• The Office of War Information – wanted
propaganda in feature films
• Hollywood obliges with deluge of jingoistic
films
• Patriotism in film softens through the war
and switches to comedy to keep spirits up
New Workers
• Women in the work force – replaced men in industrial
workforce
• Rosie the Riveter (journeymen jobs involving welding and
skilled jobs)
• Higher pay
• By 1944 – 19 million women held paid jobs (up 6 million
form 1940)
• Women’s share of gov’t jobs increased from 22 to 33
percent
• Mexican American Workers – primarily in farming
• Bracero program – Mexican gov’t recruited workers to
come to the U.S. on six to twelve month contracts
New Workers
• Native Americans – 40,000 moved to off
reservation jobs (worked in military supplies)
• War experience accelerated the fight for full civil
rights
• Congress made Indians citizens in 1924 – but
several states continued to deny them the right
to vote
• National Congress of American Indians, 1944 –
efforts led to Supreme Court decision to compel
states to allow Indians to vote
New Workers
• African Americans found economic advancement
through war jobs
• Labor leader A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of
Sleeping Car Porters worked with Walter White of the
NAACP to plan “Negro March on Washington” to
protest racial discrimination by the federal government
• President FDR issued Executive Order 8802, June 1941
– barring racial discrimination in defense contracts
and creating the Fair Employment Practices
Committee (FEPC) “No discrimination on grounds of
race, color, creed, or national origin.”
Clashing Cultures
• Migration of men and women in search of work
during the war led to clashes with traditional
boundaries of race and region
• African-American migration from the South
collided with white workers seeking the same
jobs
• Racial violence in over 50 cities in 1943 alone
• Zoot Suit Wars: Los Angeles, Mexican Americans
and Whites erupted into widespread violence
including over 400,000 people
The War at Home
Interment of Japanese Americans
• Feb. 19, 1942: President Roosevelt issued
Executive Order 9066 – authorized the
secretary of war to define restricted areas and
remove civilian residents who were threats to
national security.
• Primary target - 112,000 Japanese Americans
in California, Washington, Oregon & Arizona
• Outbreak of the war triggered anti-Japanese
hysteria
Interment of Japanese Americans
• April 1942 – Japanese in coastal states were
given a week to report to assembly centers
where they were then moved to 10 internment
camps located in remote areas of the western
interior. (How is this like relocation of Native
Americans in the 1800’s?)
• Japanese responses – some renounced their
American citizenship , others sought to cooperate
& move to other parts of the country, many
young men joined the 442nd Regimental
Combat Team
Interment of Japanese Americans
• Korematsu v. United States (1944) – Supreme
Court sanctioned the removal of Japanese
Americans to Internment Camps
• Japanese Claims Act of 1948 – U.S.
government officially recognized its liability
to Japanese loses of property as a result of
Interment
• 1988 – Congress approved redress payments
to the sixty thousand survivors
The End of the New Deal
• New Deal had run out of steam by 1938
• Republican Congress in 1942 – started to undue
FDR’s New Deal programs
• Election of 1944: Republican candidate –
Governor Thomas Dewey of N.Y.
• Harry Truman ran as FDR’s vice-Presidential
candidate
• Roosevelt won his fourth term (432 to 99
electoral votes – but with only 54% of the
popular vote)
War & Peace
• Gathering Allied Strength
• Allied victories in North Africa in 1942 & the
invasion of Italy in 1943 secured western
influence in the Mediterranean Sea & Middle
East
• U.S & Soviet Union wanted full scale strike at
Germany
War & Peace
• Allied nations began to out produce Germany
by 1943 in war materials (Why would this be
important to the outcome of the war?)
• Casablanca, Jan. 1943 – Roosevelt & Churchill
demanded “unconditional surrender”
• Tehran Conference, 1943 – U.S & G.B.
promised to invade France within 6 months
• Stalin wanted control of eastern Europe
Victory and Tragedy in Europe
Turning the Tide in Europe
• Operation Torch – Nov. 8, 1942: British &
American forces under command of Gen. Dwight
D. Eisenhower attack German forces in North
Africa
• Battle of the Kasserine Pass – German counter
offensive
• Axis forces surrendered North Africa in May of
1943
• July – August 1943: British and American armies
attacked Sicily, Italy
Turning the Tide in Europe
• Italian King & army forced Mussolini from
power & negotiated peace with allies
• Germany occupied most of Italy while allied
forces landed in Southern Italy
• Bitter fighting lasted until the surrender of
Germany in 1945.
• Eastern Front: German offensive stopped at
the Battle of Kursk in the Soviet Union
Operation Overload
• D-Day: June 6, 1944 – major amphibious
invasion at Normandy, France
• Allied forces landed 500,000 men and 100,000
vehicles within 2 weeks
• Break-through of the German line at St. Lo
• This led to the encirclement of German army
at Falaise
Operation Overload
• Germans lost 250,000 men
• Allies liberated Paris on August 25th
• Eastern Front: by end of 1944 – Red Army
entered the Balkans & reached central
Poland
Russian Losses
• Russians suffered over 20 million casualties
(6000 Vista Murrietas, 195 Murrietas)
• Equivalent to the deaths of everyone in
Nevada, New Mexico, West Virginia,
Nebraska, Idaho, Hawaii, Maine, New
Hampshire, Rhode Island, Montana,
Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North
Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming
Victory & Tragedy in Europe
• Allied air strikes – by end of 1944, bombing
raids crippled German war production,
transportation, and its economy
• Dresden – allied air raid using fire bombs
destroyed the undefended city killing over
50,000 civilians
• Battle of the Bulge: Dec. 16, 1944 – Hitler
attempted to break British and American lines
by capturing the port city of Antwerp
A pile of bodies awaits cremation after the firebombing of
Dresden, February 1945
City of Dresden, Germany, after an Allied bombing, February 1945
Victory & Tragedy in Europe
• German offensive ran out of gas before it
could reach the allied fuel supplies
• Collapse of German forces – allied armies
crossed the Rhine River in March capturing
the industrial center of Germany
• On April 25, 1945 – American and Soviet
troops met at the Elba River
• On April 30 – Hitler committed suicide (Yay!
Though 20 years too late.)
Victory & Tragedy in Europe
• Berlin surrendered to the Soviets on May 2
• VE Day (Victory in Europe Day) – May 8th:
Nazi state formally capitulated (unconditional
surrender = no “stab in the back” myth)
Holocaust
• “Final solution” to what Hitler saw as “the
Jewish problem” – starting in 1942, Hitler’s SS
began a campaign of genocide which focused
on the elimination of the Jewish population
in Europe.
• Death camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka
were used to murder over 6 million Jews and
1 million Poles, Gypsies, and others deemed
inferior by the Nazis
Berga Concentration Camp Survivors, 1945
A pile of human remains at the site of Nazi concentration camp
Majdanek, 1944, Lublin
Corpses at Buchenwald, April 1945
Corpses at Buchenwald, April 1945
Einsatzgruppe A members shoot Jews on the outskirts of Kovno,
1941-1942
Executions of Kiev Jews by German army mobile killing units, 1942
Eyeglasses from Auschwitz prisoners, 1945
German SS guards executed after the liberation of Dachau by
Allied forces, 1945
German woman forced to see death camps, 1945
Mass Grave Bergen Belsen, May 1945
Members of the Sonderkommando burning corpses on fires in pits
at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, 1944
Rows of bodies of dead inmates fill the yard of Lager Nordhausen,
a Gestapo concentration camp, 1945
Senator Alben W. Barkley views the evidence at first hand at
Buchenwald concentration camp, April 1945
The last Jew in Vinnitsa, 1941
Three emaciated survivors liberated from Buchenwald, April 1945
Ustaše militia execute prisoners at Jasenovac concentration camp
Young German boy walks beside corpses of hundreds of prisoners
from Bergen Belsen, April 20 1945
Wedding Rings stolen From Buchenwald Inmates, May 5, 1945
The Pacific Theatre and Peace
The Pacific War
• U.S. war strategy in the Pacific divided
responsibilities between Gen. Douglas
MacArthur led forces in a “Island hopping
campaign” from Australia to the Philippines,
and Admiral Chester Nimitz who commanded
the Central Pacific fleet.
• Plan was to isolate Japan from its southern
conquests
• British moved from India to retake Burma
The Pacific War
• With Japans army bogged down in China – Allies
planned to bomb Japan
• Island Hopping campaign – American naval
version of blitzkrieg: planes from aircraft carriers
control the skies while navy and land forces
isolated and captured the most strategically
Japanese-held islands while by passing the rest
• Racial hatred between American & Japanese
forces intensified the fighting in the Pacific
The Pacific War
• Leyte Gulf – Allied invasion of Japanese-held
Philippines and the destruction of the
Japanese fleet leaving the homeland of Japan
undefended against invasion
• U.S. naval blockade of Japanese imports and
heavy bombing of Japanese cities continually
weakened Japanese war capabilities
• U.S. capture of strategic Japanese islands:
Iwo Jima & Okinawa (April-June 1945)
Searching for Peace
• Yalta Conference (Feb. 1945) – Roosevelt,
Churchill, and Stalin debated plans for the
postwar world
• American goal was to enlist the USSR in finishing
off the Japanese
• Stalin wanted control of Manchuria, China in
exchange for joining the
• Stalin would only give vague pledges to allow
non-communist to participate in the coalition
governments in Eastern Europe
Searching for Peace
• April 12, 1945 – FDR died of a cerebral
hemorrhage
• Harry Truman – Vice President succeeds FDR
• Potsdam Conference (July 1945) – BritishSoviet-American conference where they
debated the future of Germany
• Potsdam Declaration - Truman made it clear
that the U.S. expected to dominate the
occupation of Japan
Searching for Peace
• Goal was to democratize the Japanese political
system and reintroduce Japan into the
international community - intended to give
Japan an opening for surrender
• Sec. of state James Byrnes – urged Truman to use
the new atomic bomb
• U.S. was convinced Japan would fight to the
death in an invasion of the homeland
• Using the bomb offered a quick end to the war
and it might intimidate Stalin
End of the war in the Pacific
• U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb on August 6,
1945 at Hiroshima (killed approx. 80,000) and
the second on Aug. 8 at Nagasaki (killed approx.
40,000)
• V.J. Day: Victory in Japan Day - Japan ceased
hostilities on Aug. 14th and surrendered formally
on Sept. 2nd
• Japanese government signed the terms of
surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri a
battle ship nearly destroyed at Pearl Harbor on
Dec. 7th, 1941
Captain Paul Tibbets in the Enola Gay minutes before takeoff to
drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, 1945
Harold Agnew carrying the plutonium core of the Nagasaki Fat
Man bomb, 1945
The Fat Man on transport carriage, Tinian Island, 1945
Nagasaki, 20 minutes after the atomic bombing in 1945