The Home front &
the End of WWII
APUSH ch 25 part 2
Home front
•
How did WWII affect the home front?
– Large migrations – many people moved for jobs
• Rural to urban, and westward
– Esp. blacks out of South
– New roles/opportunities for women
• Jobs in factories (Rosie the Riveter)
• Jobs in military – WACS, WAVES, WASPS
• New autonomy for women – problems?
– Lack of fed. Provided child care
– Education understaffed – female teachers left for higher paying jobs
(school dropouts also increased)
– Marriage rates climb, as do divorce and childbirth rates
Home front
•
How did the war affect racial issues?
– New econ. Opportunities for blacks
• Industrial jobs
• Military – segregated units, no combat units until very end of war
– A. Phillip Randolph pushes FDR to allow blacks into military
– Tuskegee Airmen – all-black fighter pilot squadron
– Other groups contributed: Navajos used language as code in Pacific, JapaneseAmericans served in segregated units
» 442nd Regimental Combat team – Nisei Regiment – most decorated of
war in Europe
– New push for civil rights
• Double V strategy – win war against fascism and discrimination in US
• CORE founded in 1942 (James Farmer)
• NAACP membership rises
– Also heightened tensions
• Discrimination still existed in defense industries
• Zoot suit riots in LA – anti-Latino sentiment
Home front
• What was the experience of Japanese-Americans
during the War?
– Served in segregated military units
– Those on west coast put into internment camps
– Why?
• Fear of loyalty to Japan & racism
• Economic opportunity
• Korematsu v. U.S. – Supreme CT upholds decision
– Not overturned until 1990s
• Living camps (not concentration camps) – unpleasant, unjust
End of War – Europe
• How did war in Europe end?
– Eastern front – Soviet manpower and industrial output turns tide after 1943
• Key German losses at Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kursk
– Germans lost over 1,000,000 troops in Russian sieges and gained nothing
• Soviet army pushes toward Berlin, occupying Eastern Europe in process
– Puppet regimes after war
– D-Day – Allied invasion of France (Normandy) aka Operation Overlord
•
•
•
•
Amphibious and airborne invasion
Breakout – liberate France
Massive bombing of Germany by air (Dresden)
Slow steady push toward Germany after
– Western front – after battle of the Bulge, German army crippled
• Allies push to cross Rhine before Germans destroy every bridge
• Allied armor crosses at Remagen, pushes toward capital
– Yalta conference – 1945 –
• USSR pledges to help vs. Japan sometime after Germany defeated
• US promises to give USSR concessions in Manchuria, Pacific (sorry, China)
• USSR promises some free elections in East Europe
– FDR dies in April 1945, Truman becomes Pres.
– Hitler commits suicide in late April
•
•
•
•
German high command surrenders on May 7, 1945
VE day = May 8, 1945
Details of Holocaust slowly emerge
Potsdam Conference after war in Europe
D-Day
End of War – Pacific
• How does Pacific Theater come to an end?
– US island hopping strategy works
•
•
•
•
Islands used as bases for air raids
Midway – naval victory
Guadalcanal – major victory for US
Philippines liberated
– Fighting gets more intense
• Japanese – NO SURRENDER!!!
• Fighting on Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa shows Japan will LITERALLY
fight to the last man (or woman, or child)
• US blockades Japan in 1945, continues air attacks
• Contemplates invasion
Fall of Japan
• What are US options vs. Japan?
– Continue blockade and air attacks (for how long)?
– Proceed w/ invasion (some experts estimate over 1,000,000
casualties)
– Drop atomic bombs
• Decision – Truman asks Japan for unconditional surrender
in late July – Japan refuses
– 1st bomb – Hiroshima – Aug. 6, 1945 – Enola Gay
• Approx. 100,000 killed
• Japan does not surrender
– 2nd bomb – Nagasaki – Aug. 9, 1945
• Approx. 80,000 killed
• Japan surrenders Aug. 14
• VJ Day – war is over
Atomic Bomb Controversy
• What were the controversial questions?
– Wouldn’t Japan have been forced to surrender
after a longer blockade?
– Should we have asked for unconditional
surrender?
– Should we have demonstrated power of bomb?
– Did we do it to intimidate USSR?
– Was it morally justified (civilian targets)?
– Did racism play a factor?
– Was a second bomb necessary?
Effects of War
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
60 million people dead
– Over half civilians
– 10 million in Holocaust (6 million Jews, ¾ of all Jews in Europe)
US becomes world’s top military & econ. Superpower
USSR other military superpower
Germany & Japan both occupied, rebuilt
UN created
Soviet control of Eastern Europe (spheres of influence)
US becomes middle-class society (more money to people)
New opportunities for women & minorities
–
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Stirrings of civil rights movement
US industry booms
US “baby boom”
Greater mobility in US
New business/advertising/industrial/entertainment models – mass production, mass
marketing, mass consumption
Nuremburg Trials & Geneva Conventions – re-write rules of war
Creation of Israel – sows seeds on unrest in Mid-East
Expanded role of fed. Gov’t and Pres. In US
Ends Depression in US
Permanent military-industrial complex in US