Nationalism
 World
War II is one of the most
important and glorious chapters of
American History. The actions of
the US in WWII were completely
and totally justified and unselfish
and without fault.
Causes of World War II
Nationalism
Militarism
Treaty
of Versailles
Causes of World War II
Appeasement
Totalitarianism
Imperialism
Isolationism
Great Britain * Allies
 Traditionally
has a strong navy.
 Large overseas empire.
 Followed policy of Appeasement
until Poland was invaded.
 Barely survived Battle of Dunkirk.
 Won the Battle of Britain.
France * Allies
 Controls
the disputed territory
of Alsace-Lorraine.
 Fears another German
Invasion.
 Maginot Line - Largest Army in
Europe.
United States * Allies
 Isolationist
 Franklin
D. Roosevelt {2nd term}
 Suffering from Great Depression
 Passed Neutrality Laws in 1935
 Enters war December 7, 1941
Soviet Union * Allies
 1917-1991
 Totalitarian
State
 Joseph Stalin
 Invaded by Germany
June 22,1941
Germany * Axis
 Defeated
during WWI
 Punished by the Treaty of
Versailles
 Suffers greatly during world wide
depression
 Democracy seems to have failed.
Germany *Axis
 Adolf
Hitler appointed chancellor
in 1933.
 Hitler given dictatorial powers by
the Reichstag in 1934.
 Hitler declares himself Fuhrer.
 Totalitarian State
Germany * Axis
 Nazi
- National Socialist German
Workers Party.
 Believe in a strong Central Govt..
 Strong military.
 German race is superior.
 Hitler was the party leader.
Nuremburg Laws 1935
 Cannot
practice medicine
 Segregated public trans.
 Restricted shopping hours
 8:00pm curfew
 Wear the star of David
 Anti-Semitism
`
Italy * Axis

Benito Mussolini


Wanted to re-establish Roman Empire.
Fascism

Nation is more important than individuals.
Totalitarian State
 Invaded Ethiopia 10-17-1935

Japan * Axis
Emperor Hirohito
 Totalitarian State
 The Great War for Expansion


No natural resources
Military controls country.
 Attacked Pearl Harbor


December 7, 1941
Neutrality Laws 1935-37
 No
transporting of weapons to
warring nations.
 Materials must be sold on a
cash and carry basis.
 Americans cannot travel on
ships of warring nations.
Munich Pact
 Germany,
Britain, France
 Sudetenland
 Lebensraum
 Appeasement –
 Neville Chamberlain
 October 1938
Poland Invaded by Germany
 September
1, 1939
 Official Start of WWII
 Great Britain and France declare
war on Germany.
 August 23, 1939 Nazi-Soviet NonAggression Pact.
 Poland falls in 30 days.
Lend Lease
 War
materials sent to Britain
without payment.
 Later
extended to the Soviet
Union.
 Reversal
of Neutrality Laws.
Atlantic Charter
 War
aims of the Allies.
 Written and signed by Churchill
and Roosevelt.
 Self-Determination May 1941 - 79% Americans
against war.
 Oct 1941 Reuben James sunk
Pearl Harbor
 December
7, 1941
 Japan bombs US Navy and
Army bases in Hawaii without
warning.
 US enters the war.
US Military
 16,000,000
 1,000,000
 400,000
 70%
Army
 26% Navy
 4% Marines
Korematsu
v.
United States
(1945)
•
•
•
•
•
•
During World War II, just after Pearl Harbor, Presidential Executive Order 9066 and
congressional statutes gave the military authority to exclude citizens of Japanese ancestry
from areas deemed critical to national defense and potentially vulnerable to espionage.
The federal government targeted anyone of Japanese descent living within 60 miles of the
west coast of the United States. 140,000 Japanese Americans living in California, Oregon and
Washington were first subject to a curfew and later rounded up and interned at what were
called Assembly Centers, but were essentially jails.
In Hirabayashi v. United States (1943) the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the curfew
order was constitutional. But the next case overshadowed Hirabayashi.
Fred Korematsu was born in San Francisco, tried to join the military but was denied for health
reasons, and instead worked as a welder in the defense industry.
He was engaged to an Italian-American woman and decided to undergo plastic surgery to
convince authorities that he was of Spanish-Hawaiian origin.
Korematsu remained in San Leandro, California and violated Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34
of the U.S. Army.
Justice Hugo Black for the 6-3 Majority
•
•
•
The Court sided with the government and
held that the need to protect against
espionage outweighed Korematsu's rights.
Justice Black argued that compulsory
exclusion, though constitutionally suspect
due to its racial classification, is justified
during circumstances of "emergency and
peril.“
“Korematsu was not excluded from the
Military Area because of hostility to him or
his race. He was excluded because we are
at war with the Japanese Empire, because
the properly constituted military authorities
feared an invasion of our West Coast and
felt constrained to take proper security
measures, because they decided that the
military urgency of the situation demanded
that all citizens of Japanese ancestry be
segregated from the West Coast
temporarily, and, finally, because Congress,
reposing its confidence in this time of war in
our military leaders — as inevitably it must
— determined that they should have the
power to do just this.”
Strict Scrutiny
 The
government has the burden
of proving that its challenged
policy is constitutional. To
withstand strict scrutiny, the
government must show that its
policy is necessary to achieve a
compelling state interest
Justice
Frank Murphy Dissenting
• “This exclusion goes over ‘the very brink of
constitutional power’ and falls into the ugly abyss
of racism.”
• “The judicial test of whether the Government, on a
plea of military necessity, can validly deprive and
individual of any of his constitutional rights is
whether the deprivation is reasonably related to a
public danger that is so ‘immediate, imminent, and
impending’ as not to admit delay and not to permit
the intervention of ordinary constitutional
processes to alleviate the danger.”
• “I dissent from the legalization of racism. Racial
discrimination in any form and in any degree has
no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way
of life. All residents of this nation are kin in some
way by blood or culture to a foreign land. Yet they
are primarily and necessarily a part of the new
and distinct civilization of the United States. They
must accordingly be treated at all times as the
heirs of the American experiment and as entitled
to all the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the
Constitution.”
Justice
Robert Jackson
Dissenting
• “While an unconstitutional order
will only last as long as the
conflict, a judicial construction of
the due process clause that will
this order is a far more subtle
blow to liberty than the order
itself.”
• “The Court for all time has
validated the principle of a racial
discrimination in criminal
procedure and of transplanting
American citizens. The principle
then lies about like a loaded
weapon ready for the hand of
any authority that can bring
forward a plausible claim of an
urgent need.”
Korematsu Aftermath
•
•
•
•
Handed down the same day at
Korematsu, the Court held in Ex parte
Endo (1945) that while exclusion was
constitutional, citizens deemed “loyal”
must be set free. This decision helped
lead to the re-opening of the West Coast
for resettlement by Japanese-Americans.
The 1948 Japanese-Americans Claims
Act allowed camp detainees to receive
compensation for their losses. The
government received $131 million in
claims, and paid $38 million to settle
them.
In 1988, President Reagan signed the
Civil Liberties Act, which gave $20,000 in
reparations to each of the 75,000
surviving camp detainees, as well as an
apology for their losses of liberty and
property.
In 1998, President Clinton awarded Fred
Korematsu the Presidential Medal of
Freedom.
Winston Churchill
 Prime
Minister of
Great Britain
during WWII.
 Strong
will and
personality
helped the
British survive
the Blitz.
Franklin Roosevelt
 Liberal
Democrat
 Elected to Four
terms.
 Crippled by Polio
 Wealthy Family
 Co-wrote Atlantic
Charter
Joseph Stalin
 Premier
of the
Soviet Union
from 1924-1953
 20
million killed
in labor camps
during his
tenure.
Adolf Hitler
Leader of the Third
Reich
 WWI veteran
 Born in Austria.
 Arrested in 1923
and jailed for
treason.
 Committed Suicide
in 1945

Benito Mussolini
Fascist dictator of
Italy.
 Known as IL
DUCE.
 Made Italy’s
economy stable.
 Made the trains run
on time.

The Big Three
 Joseph
Stalin
USSR.
 Franklin
Roosevelt USA
 Winston
Churchill Great
Britain.
 At Tehran Conf.
Dwight D Eisenhower
 During
WWII
was the Allied
Commander in
Europe.
 After WWII was
the commander
of NATO Troops.
 34th President
George S Patton
 Veteran
of
Pershing’s
Expedition into
Mexico.
 WWI Veteran
 Most feared
Allied General.
 Liberated
Buchenwald
Montgomery & Patton
 Field
marshal
Montgomery was
the leading
British
commander.
 Patton and
Montgomery did
not get along.
Harry S Truman
 WWI
veteran
 Senator from
Missouri
 FDR’s Vice Pres.
 33rd President
 Dropped the
bomb on Japan.
Operation Barbarosa
 June
22, 1941
 German Invasion of Soviet Union
 Blitzkrieg ineffective
Vast distances
Spring rains/ Russian Winter
Scorched Earth Policy
Operation Torch
 1942
 Allied
Invasion of North Africa
 Opens a second front against
Germany
 Allied Victory.
Casablanca Conference
January 1943
 Meet for the first time near the
front during the war.
Winston Churchill
Franklin Roosevelt
 Unconditional Surrender.

Operation Overlord
D-Day
 June
6, 1944
 Allied invasion of France.
 Largest amphibious assault in
history.
 Along 5 beaches of Normandy.
 Dwight D Eisenhower
commander.
Battle of the Bulge
 December
1944 - January 1945
 German counter-attack
 Slows down American advance
into Germany.
 Allied Victory
VE Day
 May
8, 1945
 Germany surrenders
Atomic Weapons


Germany was
working to develop
Atomic bombs.
V-2 rockets were
hitting London with
regular bombs in
1944.
Battle of the Coral Sea
 May
1942
 Stops Japanese advance
toward Australia.
 US victory
 Between ship launched aircraft
on both sides.
Battle of Midway
 June
1942
 Stops Japanese advance west.
 Half way between Japan and
Hawaii.
 US victory.
 Japan is no longer an offensive
threat.
Terms
 Island
Hopping
 Kamikaze
 Manhattan
Project
 PT - 109
 Iwo Jima
Iwo JIma
8
square mile island.
 Required for airbases.
Land
based bombers could hit
Japan.
Fighter escort would be
available.
Iwo Jima
 20,000
Japanese troops
heavily fortified.
800
pillbox, 3 miles of tunnels.
Fortifying had gone on for
years.
Iwo Jima
 70,000
US Marines invade,
20,000 Japanese defending.
 Battle lasts 26 days.
Iwo Jima
 US
6,821 killed
19,217
wounded
Battle fatigue 2,648
20,000
Japanese KIA
Important Dates
 July
16, 1945
 August
15,
1945
 August
6, 1945
 September
 August
9, 1945
1945
2,
Hiroshima
 August
6, 1945
 70,000-100,000 killed by the
blast.
 Five square miles destroyed.
 Another 100,000
Nagasaki
 August
9, 1945
 40,000 – 90,000 killed by the
blast.
 Another 100,000
Tokyo
 March
9, 1945
 Tokyo fire bombed.
 100,000 killed
 3 million homeless
Final Solution
 Nazi
attempt to erase the
Jewish Race.
 1942-1945
 12 million people
 6 million Jews
Final Solution
 The
Nuremburg Laws of
34,35,36 evolved into the Final
Solution.
 German public was unarmed
by gun laws 1938.