GREAT DEPRESSION
AND WWII REVIEW
Effects on the Postwar World?
Great Depression Facts
• Stock market crash – Black Thursday, Oct. 24, 1929
• Productivity fell to 1/3 of 1929 levels
• Lack of private investment
• At worst point, unemployment was 24.9% of total
•
•
•
•
workforce = 12,830,000 people
Plus farmers – fall in farm prices, foreclosures, Dust Bowl
Migrant workers, housing foreclosures, renters,
Hoovervilles
FDR elected in Nov. 1932, proclaiming a “New Deal” for
all Americans
Major shift in politics, culture, economics, and society
The New Deal, 1 & 2
• Two New Deals, First and Second
• Experimentation: first 100 days and after
• Not always consistent, some things worked, some things
didn’t
• Three main goals: Relief, Recovery, Reform
• World War II finally ended Depression by achieving some
of the goals of the 2nd New Deal – Keynesianism
• For a list of New Deal programs, go to this link
Second New Deal, 1935-1941
• Government as countervailing power to business
• Business had too much power
• Govt. and labor can act as counterweight to business power
• Anti-monopoly
• Basis for modern liberal ideas - Liberalism
• Underconsumptionism = Keynesianism: government must
“prime the pump” – provide relief, jobs, economic growth
to increase public consumption of goods/services =
economic growth, industry, jobs, income…
Second New Deal (cont.)
• NLRA, the Wagner Act (1935): labor’s “Magna Carta”,
guaranteed right to join a union
• Social Security Act (1935): established social safety net
• Wealth Tax Act: taxes on wealthiest to 75%
• Progressive taxation – higher on wealthiest
• FDR’s Big 1936 victory – showed support for 2nd New
Deal vs. 1st New Deal and critics
The CIO and the Labor Movement
• CIO formed in 1936, industrial unions, rival to AFL trade
•
•
•
•
•
unions
John L. Lewis, head of UMW and other CIO leaders said
“FDR wants you to join a union” – made union membership
patriotic
Flint, Michigan, GM sit-down strike in 1937; 170 sit-downs all
over nation by March
Union members: 3 mil in 1933; 10.5 mil in 1941
Unionized major industries for first time: auto, steel,
meatpacking, rubber
Videos: GM Sit-down; Unionizing Ford
Flint Sit-down Strike, 1936-37
Studs
Terkel
Interview
Three
Stooges,
Sit-downers
Political Realignment:
The New Deal Coalition
• New Democratic Party majority composed of:
• Liberals and leftists
• Workers, union members
• Urban ethnic groups, immigrants
• African Americans
• Southern Democrats
• Problems/weaknesses in coalition?:
New Deal Culture:
• Focus on work and workers; problems of machine:
New Deal Culture:
• Focus on rural poor, forgotten Americans:
• John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath
• Dorothea Lange’s FSA photographs
• Regionalist painters and artists focused on rural
regions, farmers,
small town America
• Woody Guthrie’s
songs
Dorothea Lange: Child and Her Mother, Wapato, Yakima Valley,
Washington
Dorothea Lange:
White Angel
Bread Line, San
Francisco
Dorothea Lange:
Dorothea Lange:
New Deal Questions and Issues
• Question for the rest of this class: What happens to the
New Deal Order (changes in politics, society, culture
brought about through the New Deal)?
• Upheld and Strengthened?
• Attacked and Dismantled?
• Extended to other groups, rest of population?
• African Americans
• Women
• Everyone?
WORLD WAR II
The ‘Good War’ at Home and Abroad
Lead-up to U.S. Involvement
• 1930s, Japanese colonialism in Pacific
• 1930s, Rise of fascism in Europe
• 1936, Axis formed (Germany, Italy, Japan)
• 1938, Germany annexed Austria, Czech.
• 1939, Hitler-Stalin Pact
• 1939, Hitler invaded Poland
• June, 1940, France fell
• Summer-fall, 1940, Battle of Britain
(bombing)
• June, 1941, Hitler invaded USSR (mistake)
• Dec. 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor, U.S. entered war
From Isolationism to War
• American criticism of WWI, “merchants of death” – 1935
Neutrality Act;
‘cash-and-carry’ law
• America First movement
Fighting the War: Basics
• Allies, Big Three (U.S., GB, USSR) + France and
China
• FDR, Churchill, Stalin – Big Three Leaders
• Strained relations over war aims and strategy
• Axis (Germany, Italy, Japan)
• Hitler, Mussolini, Emperor Hirohito/Military leaders
• Two Wars: Europe and Pacific
• War in Europe
• USSR vs. Germany, 1941, the Eastern Front
• Allies entered Europe through Africa/Italy first
(1942/43)
• Then D-Day invasion at Normandy on French coast
(1944), push towards Berlin
• V-E Day, May 8, 1945
The Big Three
War at Home:
Expanded Govt. Power
• Similar to WWI experience
• Dollar-a-year men, corp. leaders, guaranteed profits
• Bigness a benefit – large bureaucracies and businesses
•
•
•
•
favored for high productivity – top 100 comp. from 30%
(1940) to 70% (1945)
WPB – powerful, contracts, conversion, control
OPA – controlled consumer prices
Paying for war: taxes, debt, bonds
Military drafted 31 million men; half failed
Idealism of Allies
• FDR’s Four Freedoms:
• Atlantic Charter – U.S. and GB – war a fight for freedom,
free trade, collective security, national self-determination
• Music of Popular Front:
• Aaron Copland
• George Gershwin
• Woody Guthrie
• Big Band
Four Freedoms
Four Freedoms
War at Home: Mobilization, Unity, and
Sacrifice
Mobilizing Workers: Creating an
‘Arsenal of Democracy’
• Labor shortage: women,
•
•
•
•
•
blacks entered workforce,
industrial jobs, moved north
Workers continued to join
unions during war
Gained higher wages and
income
NWLB handled disputes
Labor’s no-strike pledge for
war
Tension and strikes: disputes
over wages vs. corp. profits
led UMW to strike in 1943
War at Home: A War of Possibilities:
Racial and Economic Liberalism
• Economic Liberalism: Social and economic equality (The
Four Freedoms)
• Equality of sacrifice in wartime (fair wages and profits)
• Racial and Gender Equality: Incorporation of women,
blacks, and immigrants into nation – the right to fight, to
be patriotic, to join the nation
• Racial and Gender Equality: Ability of all Americans to
serve country and gain benefits of service
Racial Liberalism During War
WWII Civil Rights: Realities
• Fight for equality at home and in war effort:
• Black newspapers and organizations: Double V
campaign: war against fascism abroad AND racism at
home
• FEPC created in 1941 after A. Philip Randolph’s
threat of March on Washington – equal opportunity
• U.S. armed forces segregated throughout war, even
in other countries
• War as hothouse for civil rights:
• Disappointments of wartime experience led to black
mobilization of 1950s and 1960s
• Women reluctant to return home after war-work, fought
1950s domestic culture
• Gays became less isolated, found others, organized
WWII Civil Rights: Realities
• Tendency towards suspicion and conformity on the home
front
• Private Snafu films
• Problems of racism at home and abroad:
• Conflict between war aims and realities of racism in
•
•
•
•
U.S. society and military
Discrimination against black Americans: segregated
armed forces, workplaces, lower pay
Japanese internment
Anti-Hispanic attacks in Los Angeles led to “zoot suit
riots”
Racial war against Japanese
Double Victory over Racism
Band, The Ink Spots, supported Double V campaign
Legacy of Wartime Racism
• Why no black soldiers in Saving Private Ryan?
Legacy of Wartime Racism
• Why no black soldiers in Saving Private Ryan?
• Structural and legal
•
•
•
•
•
racism had long-term
effects
Segregated armed
forces, bases
Unable to prove
heroism/loyalty
Discouraged from
using G.I. Bill
G.I. housing loan
discrimination; redlined black neighborhoods
Desegregated armed forces, in 1948: wars with black soldiers on
front lines = losses, dishonorable wars
Race War in the Pacific
• War against Japanese diff. than war against
Germans: racism on both sides
• History of white anti-Asian racism in U.S. and abroad
(Chinese/Japanese exclusion, Filipino war)
• Japanese internment within U.S.
• “Japs” portrayed as particularly sneaky (rats) and
bloodthirsty
• Racial aspect, along w/ nature of jungle combat, led
to atrocities on both sides
• Take no prisoners
• Taking of souvenirs (body parts, skulls)
• Would U.S. have used atomic bomb against the
Germans?
Anti-Japanese Propaganda
Anti-Japanese Propaganda
Anti-Japanese Propaganda
Ethics and Morality of War
• ‘The Good War’?
• Effects of WWII military tactics and culture on later
U.S. and world history?
• German and Japanese war machines, atrocities on
civilians:
• Nazis, Guernica, bombing of London, Holocaust
• Japanese, Rape of Nanking, kamikaze, enslavement
• Methods of war:
• mass mechanized war
• targeting of civilians
• inciting terror and demoralization
• U.S. bombing of non-military civilian German targets:
Dresden (Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five)
• U.S. intentional firebombing of Tokyo; ¼ of city burned
• U.S. use of atomic bombs
Summary Questions:
• What lasting effects did the Great Depression, New Deal,
and WWII have on American society?
• What was the position of the U.S. in the postwar world?
• What problems remained within U.S. society in the
immediate postwar world?
• How did people address these problems?