World War II
SSUSH19

SSUSH19 The student will identify the origins, major developments,
and the domestic impact of World War II, especially the growth of
the federal government.

Explain A. Philip Randolph’s proposed march on Washington,
D.C., and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s response.

Explain the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the internment
of Japanese-Americans, German-Americans, and ItalianAmericans.

Explain major events; including the lend-lease program, the Battle
of Midway, D-Day, and the fall of Berlin.

Describe war mobilization, as indicated by rationing, war-time
conversion, and the role of women in war industries.

Describe the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos and the scientific,
economic, and military implications of developing the atomic
bomb.

Compare the geographic locations of the European Theater and
the Pacific Theater and the difficulties the U.S. faced in delivering
weapons, food, and medical supplies to troops.
How did the US get
involved?
1.
Ally support
1.
Germany, Italy and Japan were invading foreign
nations
2.
US neutrality acts prevented support of allies
1.
3.
2.
Could not send financial or arms support
War in europe, and fear of war at home, increased
pressure to aid allies in Europe
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
Neutrality

Isolationist foreign policy after WWI

1934 – Johnson Debt Default Act


1935 - Neutrality Act


Could not send financial aid to nations who defaulted on
previous war debts
Prohibited sale of arms and munitions to nations at war
1937 – Neutrality Act

Forbade American corporations from loaning money to
belligerent nations

Must purchase goods with cash and carry back on own ships
Lend-Lease Act

Congress agreed to end “cash and carry” policy
for arms in 1941

Began Lend-Lease Act

Loaned or leased arms to any national vital to US
defense

$50 billion in weapons sent
Lend-Lease Program: loan or lease
arms to nations vital to US defense
The Axis
Adolph Hitler
Benito Mussolini
Hideki Tojo
Axis Powers
 Alliance
between Germany,
Italy, and Japan against the
allied nations in WWII.
Adolf Hitler
 German
Nazi dictator
during World War II (18891945).
Benito Mussolini
 Italian
1945).
fascist dictator (1883-
Hideki Tojo
 Japanese
army officer and
politician who ruled as dictator
(1941-1944) during World War II
The Allies
Allied Powers
 WWII
alliance between Great
Britain, the U.S., France, China,
the Soviet Union, and several
other European countries in an
effort to defeat the Axis
powers.
Winston Churchill
 British
politician and Prime
Minster of Great Britain from
1940 to 1945, and 1951 to 1955.
Joseph Stalin
 Russian
leader who succeeded
Lenin as head of the
Communist Party and created
a totalitarian state by purging
all opposition

Isn’t there an
international group to
prevent this kind of
aggression?
Pearl Harbor
December
7, 1941.
Japan surprise attacks
the American Pacific
fleet at Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii.
Pearl Harbor

December 7, 1941
 2,403
killed; 1,178 injured
 Much of US Pacific navy fleet destroyed

FDR calls it “a date which will live in infamy”

94% of Americans had been isolationists
before the attack in Hawaii
 After
the attack, America changed its mind
FDR DECLARES WAR ON JAPAN (but has to
help Britain with Germany first)
 What does December 7th have in common
with September 11th?

Pearl Harbor
Mobilization
act
of assembling
readying for war or
other emergency
Mobilization for WWII
5 million American volunteer
 Another 10 million drafted (Selective
Service)
 18 million working in war industries

 Less
than 25% hired African Americans
Weekly paychecks rose 35%
 Unemployment falls to 1.2%
 What did joining World War II do to the
Great Depression, if unemployment
dropped from 25% to 1.2%?

Rationing
Allow
each person to
have only a fixed
amount of (a
particular commodity)
Rationing



Office of Price Administration (OPA)
set limits on prices, keeping them
managable (slow down the inflation!)
OPA also set up a system where
households received rationing
coupons (c-books) to be used for
buying such scarce goods as meat,
shoes, sugar, coffee, and gasoline.
Why would it be important to RATION
things like sugar and gasoline during
war?
War-Time Conversions
industries
switch to
wartime production.
War-time Conversion


War Production Board (WPB) said which industries would switch
to wartime production

Mechanical pencils turned out bomb parts

Bedspread maker made mosquito netting.

Soft-drink company started filling explosives.
WPB also set a list of conserved materials


Iron, tin, paper, cooking fat
What may have Henry Ford’s company converted to during
World War II?
A. Philip Randolph
 played
a central role in the
drive for Civil Rights for
African Americans from the
1920s to the 1970s.
A. Philip Randolph

July 1, 1944 Randolph called for African
Americans to march at Washington DC
under this banner:
 “We
Loyal Colored Americans Demand the Right
to Work and Fight for Our Country.”
FDR backed down and issued an executive
order making discrimination in defense
industrial hiring illegal
 Who does A. Philip Randolph remind you of?

 Frederick
Douglass?
 WEB DuBois?
 Martin Luther King, Jr.?
Internment
confinement
wartime.
during
Japanese Relocation
Order
 Executive
order 9066, signed
by President Roosevelt
following the attack on Pearl
Harbor; directed the Secretary
of War to establish military
districts, which could intern
people deemed to be at risk to
national security.
Japanese-American
Internment

In 1942, FDR ordered removal of 110,000
Japanese-Americans to “relocation centers”
(prison camp)

2/3 were Nisei (born in US)

$400 million in possessions lost
Why or Why not?

Should this be illegal?

In 1944, the Supreme Court said the camps were
legal in the name of military necessity

Korematsu v. United States
Women in War Industries

6 million women come to work (35% of work
force) in order to keep the economy
running

And women in war!
 WAAC
(Women’s Auxiliary Army Commission)
never in combat positions

How have women’s roles and expectations
evolved from (a) World War I, (b) the
Roaring Twenties, (c) The Great Depression,
and now (d) World War II?
Describe the fight to win
World War II.

Who were the two main nations the US fought against in
WWII?

Where are these nations located?

How might their locations make this a tough war to fight?
D-Day
 date
of the Allied landing in
France, World War II.
D-Day

June 6, 1944

General Dwight D. Eisenhower planned a major attack from
Britain to the northern beaches of France

Operation Overlord will be the largest land-sea-air
operation in army history!

Seven days of fighting along an 80mile coast marked the
beginning of the Allied victory in Europe

Where else have you heard that name (Eisenhower) before?
D-Day
WWII Trenches
Trench Warfare
WWII Weapons
Fall of Berlin
 was
the final major offensive of
the European Theatre of World
War II.
The Fall of Berlin
Hitler’s last desperate attempt fell short at
the Battle of the Bulge
 Allies began to liberate the death camps of
the Holocaust
 Then the Soviet army stormed Berlin

 Rather
than surrender his capital city, Hitler
committed suicide

ALLIES CELEBRATE V-E DAY (Victory in
Europe)
 May

8, 1945
Hitler & Germany have been defeated, is
the war over now?
Fall of Berlin
Celebration in Times Square
Battle of Midway
 effectively
destroyed Japan’s
naval strength when the
Americans destroyed four of its
aircraft carriers. Japan’s navy
never recovered from its
mauling at Midway and it was
on the defensive after this
battle
Battle of Midway

The TURNING POINT battle in the Pacific stops the growth of
the Japanese sea empire

Huge morale boost for Americans

Opens the Allied strategy of “island hopping” toward Japan

What battle in Europe
does this compare to?

Led to victories at
Guadalcanal, Leyte Gulf,
Iwo Jima, Okinawa
Battle of Midway
Atomic Bomb
 atom
bomb: a nuclear
weapon in which enormous
energy is released by nuclear
fission (splitting the nuclei of a
heavy element like uranium or
plutonium)
The Atomic Bomb

The MANHATTAN PROJECT

TOP SECRET project led by J. Robert Oppenheimer to develop an
atomic bomb in LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico
 Hiroshima
(August 6, 1945)
 Nagasaki
(August 9, 1945)


Surrender finally comes
Why drop these bombs?
Hiroshima:
150,000+ casualties
Nagasaki:
75,000+ casualties
Economic & Political Implications of
Dropping the Atomic Bomb
General Douglas MacArthur leads US occupation
and reconstruction of Japan
 Nuclear Power could also be used for new
domestic technologies
 Soviet Union was deeply offended we didn’t tell
them about the atomic bomb testing



Couldn’t we trust them? Were we trying to send a
message of strength to them?
President Harry S. Truman’s war reputation is
emboldened as America celebrates V-J Day
(Victory of Japan)
 Wait
a second, where did President
Truman come from? I thought FDR was the
president that took us into WWII…
WWII QUIZ
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
(9)
(10)
What was the name of the acts passed by Congress
to try to prevent US involvement in WWII?
What was the name of the act of Congress that
showed we were ready to be the “arsenal of
democracy”?
What happened on December 7, 1941?
What happened on June 6, 1944?
What is the turning point battle in the Pacific
Ocean?
What is the name of the largest land-sea-air invasion
in WWII?
What is the name of the US general in charge of
operation overlord?
What is the name of the US general in charge of the
fighting against Japan?
What are two reasons for dropping the atomic
bombs on Japan?
What are the two cities in Japan where the US used
atomic bombs?
European Theater
 huge
area of heavy fighting
across Europe from Germany's
invasion of Poland on
September 1, 1939 until the
end of the war with the
German unconditional
surrender on May 8, 1945
Pacific Theater
 area
of heavy fighting across
the pacific ocean during World
War II.
Operation Overload
 Code
name for D-Day, June
6th, 1944. Land, Air, Sea attack.
Iwo Jima
 During
World War II, it was a
heavily fortified site of a
Japanese airbase, and its
attack and capture in 1944–45
was one of the severest US
campaigns. Located in the
western Pacific Ocean, sout.h
of Tokyo
Dwight D. Eisenhower
 was
a five-star general in the
United States Army during WWII
and the 34th President of the
United States.
Manhattan Project
 Secret
WWII project to harness
atomic power; resulted in the
atomic bombs dropped on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Japan.