CHAPTER
23
World War II
Fighting the Good War, 1939–1945
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World War II
FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT, 1939-1945
I. The Approaching War
II. On the Home Front
III. On the Front Lines
IV. Ending the Pacific War
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The Approaching War
A. Fascism and Appeasement
B. The Arsenal of Democracy
C. War with Japan
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The Approaching War
Non-interventionists – Those urging the
nation to stay out of overseas conflicts
Interventionists – Those advocating direct
engagement in overseas conflicts
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Fascism and Appeasement
What does this map convey about the scope
of World War II?
What different lessons did American and
other world powers draw from World War I?
How did Hitler rapidly conquer Western and
Eastern Europe?
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Fascism and Appeasement
Neutrality Acts – A series of laws from 1935
to 1939 that restricted arms sales, loans,
and transport of goods with nations at war
“Cash and carry” – A policy that required
belligerent nations to pay cash for goods
and transport them on their own ships
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Fascism and Appeasement
Munich Conference (1938) – Hoping to
avoid war, Britain and France agreed to let
Germany occupy the Sudetenland, a
German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia.
Axis – Name for nations fighting the Allies,
including Germany, Italy, and Japan
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The Arsenal of Democracy
How did the competing visions of noninterventionists and interventionists
influence FDR’s rhetoric and actions?
What competing visions did these two
cartoons (23.4 and 23.5) offer on the threat
that Hitler posed to the United States?
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The Arsenal of Democracy
Allies (World War II) – Name for the powers
fighting Germany, eventually including the
United States, Britain, France, and the
Soviet Union
Lend-Lease – A policy that circumvented
“cash and carry” by loaning rather than
selling arms to the Allies
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War with Japan
How did the United States respond to
increasing Japanese aggression?
How significant was the attack on Pearl
Harbor in the short and long run?
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War with Japan
Pearl Harbor – A U.S. naval base in Hawaii
that the Japanese attacked on December 7,
1941
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On the Home Front
A. Images of the Enemy
B. Internment Camps
C. Prosperity, Scarcity, and Opportunities for
Women
D. Racial Discord
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Images of the Enemy
What distinctions did Americans now make
between the Japanese and Chinese?
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Internment Camps
What do these photos (23.8) reveal about
American fears of a Japanese attack?
What competing responses did Japanese
Americans have to internment?
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Internment Camps
Internment camps – Camps in the United
States that held people of Japanese descent
under armed guard in isolated areas
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Competing Visions
CIVIL LIBERTIES AND NATIONAL SECURITY CLASH
The majority of the
Supreme Court agreed
that internment of
Japanese Americans
was not based on
hostility to their race
and so was not
unconstitutional.
Justice Frank Murphy
argued that internment
was unconstitutional
because it was racially
motivated.
Did a legitimate military reason exist to place
Japanese Americans in internment camps?
Prosperity, Scarcity and
Opportunities for Women
What competing visions of working women
emerged during the war?
How did World War II affect childhood?
Why was World War II unique compared to
other American wars?
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Racial Discord
How did African Americas challenge racial
discrimination during the war?
How did the wartime experiences of African
Americans compare to those of Latinos?
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On the Front Lines
A. Defeat, Then Victory
B. The Final Push in Europe
C. America’s Response to the Holocaust
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Defeat, Then Victory
What does this map (23.14) reveal about the
military challenges facing the United States
in the Pacific?
Why did the Western Allies attack the Axis
powers first in Italy, rather than France?
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Defeat, Then Victory
How did the tide gradually turn in favor of
the Allies in Europe and the Pacific?
What do media images of the Japanese
suggest about American wartime culture?
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The Final Push in Europe
Why did the Allies prevail on D-Day?
What significant decisions were reached at
the 1945 Yalta Conference?
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Images as History
COMBAT PHOTOGRAPHY
How did the political and military situation influence the way
Americans viewed these photographs?
Images as History
COMBAT PHOTOGRAPHY
Military censors forbade
publication of photographs
containing identifiable war
dead or badly mutilated
corpses, worried that such
pictures might depress
morale on the home front.
Images as History
COMBAT PHOTOGRAPHY
This image showed
teamwork and that the
struggle was not over.
Some of the marines in
the photo toured the
country in a successful
war bond campaign.
Joe Rosenthal, the
photographer, was later
accused of staging this
scene.
America’s Response to the Holocaust
How did images instruct Americans about
the meaning of the Holocaust and their role
as liberators?
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Envisioning Evidence
DECIPHERING THE HOLOCAUST
Envisioning Evidence
DECIPHERING THE HOLOCAUST
Envisioning Evidence
DECIPHERING THE HOLOCAUST
What insights do these data offer on the scope of
the Holocaust and the American response?
Ending the Pacific War
A. Edging Closer to Japan
B. Dropping the Atomic Bomb
C. The Final Surrender
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Edging Closer to Japan
What new tactics raised the death toll in the
Pacific war?
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Dropping the Atomic Bomb
Manhattan Project – The code name for the
secret U.S. government research program to
produce the atomic bomb
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The Final Surrender
How did the war against Japan finally end?
How might this distribution of wartime
casualties have shaped the postwar world?
Why did this photo (23.22) become an iconic
image of World War II?
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Choices and Consequences
HOW TO USE THE ATOMIC BOMB
• Following the capture of Okinawa, the U.S.
military faced the formidable task of
invading Japan itself.
• President Truman’s goals were to:
– Secure an unconditional surrender from
Japan
– Save American lives
– Establish postwar supremacy over the Soviet
Union
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Choices and Consequences
HOW TO USE THE ATOMIC BOMB
Choices regarding the use of the atomic bomb:
Convince
Japan to
surrender by
conducting a
demonstration
of the bomb’s
power in an
uninhabited
area
Drop one
atomic bomb
on Japan and
wait for its
reaction
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Drop both
atomic bombs
on Japan
Inform the
Soviet Union
before
dropping the
bomb
Choices and Consequences
HOW TO USE THE ATOMIC BOMB
Decision and consequences:
• Truman chose to drop both bombs separately to maximize the
shock.
• On August 6, the “Little Boy” bomb destroyed three-fourths of
the city of Hiroshima and killed 80,000 people instantly.
• On August 9, the “Fat Man” bomb destroyed two-fifths of the
city of Nagasaki and killed 35,000 people.
• On August 14, Japan surrendered.
• Soviet and American mutual distrust led to a nuclear arms race.
Why does so much controversy surround dropping the
atomic bomb and not conventional weapons?
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Choices and Consequences
HOW TO USE THE ATOMIC BOMB
Continuing Controversies
• Should the United States have dropped the
bomb?
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Chapter Review Questions
1. What conflicting visions did Americans offer in response to
the expansionist drives of Germany and Japan? How did
these visions influence the American path to war?
2. How did visual images shape Americans’ views of the war
and their enemies?
3. How did the war affect racial, labor, and gender relations on
the home front? What conflicting visions emerged?
4. What strategic challenges and battlefield conditions did the
United States face in the Pacific and European theaters?
How did the United States prevail against Japan and
Germany?
5. Why did the United States drop the atomic bomb?
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