AP US History
Chapter 25
Impact of WWII on:
Labor:
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Unemployment dropped
Average weekly paychecks rose
Women entered the workforce in record numbers and were then forced out of it after the war
Women and minorities were offered better pay and more challenging jobs
Agriculture:
 Farm machinery and fertilizers improved
 Crop prices, crop production, and farm income increased
 Many farmers were able to pay off their mortgages
Population centers:
 The population of states, cities, and towns with military bases and defense industries increased drastically
 Shortage of housing after the war
 Shortage of food during and after the war
Family life:
 The number of women juggling work and family increased dramatically
 The number of women raising children alone increased
 The marriage rate increased dramatically, followed by a steep increase in the divorce rate
Returning GI’s:
 GI Bill of Rights dramatically increased the standard of living for many GIS by providing free education
and job training
 Federal loan guarantees for buying homes and farms or starting businesses
How these groups reacted to discrimination and racism during and after WWII
African Americans:
 Defended their nation by joining the military and working in defense industries
 Founded the Congress of Racial Equality
 Staged sit-ins
 Founded committees to improve race relations
Mexican Americans:
 Defended their nation by joining the military
 Rebellion against tradition
Japanese Americans:
 Defended their nation by joining the military
 Fought against forced relocation
 Founded the Japanese Americans Citizens League
 Sought compensation for those forced into internment camps
RESULTS OF WWII
Economic
 The war – the most costly in history- cost over $1100 billion in military expenditures and caused over $230
billion in property damage.
 European and Asian nations were faced with economic recovery problems.
 The Communist economic system spread from Russia to eastern and central Europe, and to several Asian
nations.
Social
 The war left over 22 million servicemen and civilians dead and over 34 million wounded.
 The US dead and wounded was over one million.
 Several million refugees and displaced persons, uprooted by war, needed assistance to rebuild their lives.
Political
 Germany, Italy, and Japan met complete military defeat, and their totalitarian systems were overthrown.
 The US and Russia emerge as the major world powers and soon came into a conflict called the Cold War.
 Russia acquired an empire of Communist nations.
 The Asian and African colonial peoples became intensely nationalistic and hastened the downfall of Western
imperialism.
 Great Britain and France decline as world powers and gradually relinquished major portions of their
empires.
 The atomic age brought the problem of achieving international control of atomic energy.
 To preserve peace, the Allied formed a new international organization, the United Nations.
 The US joined the UN and otherwise actively assumed the responsibility of world leadership.
DIPLOMACY: WAR TIME CONFERENCES
During the war, the Big Three (leaders of the US, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain) arranged to confer
secretly to coordinate their military strategies and to lay the foundation for peace terms.
Casablanca
 The first conference involving only Roosevelt and Churchill.
 They agreed to invade Sicily and to demand “unconditional surrender” from the Axis Powers.
Teheran
 The Big Three (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) met for the first time in the Iranian City of Teheran in
November 1943.
 They agreed that the British and Americans would begin their drive to liberate France in the spring of 1944
and that the Soviets would invade Germany and eventually join the war against Japan.
Yalta
 In February 1945, the Big Three conferred again at Yalta, a resort town on the Black Sea coast of the Soviet
Union.
 Their agreement at Yalta would prove to have long-term significance.
 After victory in Europe was achieved, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin agreed
a. Germany would be divided into occupation zones.
b. There would be free elections in the liberated countries of Eastern Europe (even though Soviet
troops now controlled the area)
c. The Soviets would enter the war against Japan, which they did on August 8, 1945 – just as Japan
was about to surrender.
d. The Soviets would control the southern half of Sakhalin Island and the Kurile Island in the Pacific
and would also have special concessions in Manchuria.
e. A New World peace organization (the United Nations) would be formed at a conference in San
Francisco.
Potsdam
 In late July, after Germany surrendered, only Stalin remained as one of the Big Three.
 President Truman was now in office and Clement Attlee had just been elected the new British Prime
Minister.
 The three leaders met in Potsdam, Germany (July 17 – August 2, 1945) and agreed
a. to issue a warning to Japan to surrender unconditionally
b. to hold war crime trials of Nazi leaders
Death of President Roosevelt
 When the president returned from Yalta and informed Congress of his agreement with Churchill and Stalin,
it was apparent that his health was deteriorating.
 On April 12, 1945, while resting in a vacation home in Georgia, he died suddenly.
 News of his death shocked the nation almost as much as Pearl Harbor.
 Harry S. Truman entered the presidency unexpectedly to assume enormous responsibilities as commander
and chief of a war effect that had no yet been won.