World War II in American History:
Teaching “The Good War”?
• Michael S. Neiberg
• neiberg102@gmail.com
“The Good War”
The Good War
New Themes in
Teaching World War II
Theme One: The US Role in the World
Europe in Ruins
• 75% of Berlin’s buildings
uninhabitable
• Food rationing continued in
Britain until 1954
• 10,000,000 DPs, most in
Germany against their will
• France lost 500,000
buildings
• USSR lost 70,000 villages
• Yugoslavia lost 75% of its
livestock
Europe in Ruins
• Two-thirds of all German
males born in 1918 were
dead
• USSR lost 20,000,000 men
• 200,000 Polish children had
no parents alive
• Hungary’s ration was 550
calories per day (US intake
is 3,000)
• 5,000,000 Jews killed
• Infant mortality in Europe
exceeded 25% in 1945
Potsdam Conference
17 July to 2 August 1945
• Unconditional Surrender for
Japan
• “The freely expressed will of
the Japanese people” will
determine its government
• Each power to take
reparations from its sector
of Germany
• Germany to be “denazified”
• Surrender of Japanese
forces in Korea and Vietnam
agreed.
Clement Atlee, Harry Truman, and Josef
Stalin at Potsdam. France was not
invited to send a representative.
Role of the USA
• Marshall Plan
– $4.6 billion in aid to
democratic capitalist states
• Rapid redevelopment of
Germany
• Creation of NATO
• Permanent place of the USA
• Insertion of US firms into
European economy
• Formation of the United
Nations, IMF
Theme Two: Home Front USA
Women welders at Ingalls Shipbuilders
in Pascagoula, Mississippi, 1943
Aircraft Production
100000
90000
80000
70000
60000
50000
40000
30000
20000
10000
0
USA
UK
USSR
Germany
Japan
1940
1942
1944
Artillery Pieces
140000
120000
100000
1939
1941
1943
1945
80000
60000
40000
20000
0
US
UK
USSR
Germany
Major Naval Vessels
300
250
200
UK
USSR
Germany
Japan
150
100
50
0
1940
1942
1944
Major Naval Vessels
(USA included)
2500
2000
USA
UK
USSR
Germany
Japan
1500
1000
500
0
1940
1942
1944
Steel (in millions of tons)
80
70
60
USA
UK
USSR
Germany
Japan
50
40
30
20
10
0
1940
1942
1944
Labor Forces
• 90 Division Gamble and
Selective Service
• US had three latent labor
pools (women, African
Americans, Mexicans)
• US added 6,000,000 jobs in
three years
– GM alone added 750,000
• In Germany there were
400,000 fewer female
workers in 1941 than 1939
Japanese Internment
(Un)intended Consequences?
Detroit Race Riot, 1943
What did the war really change?
Lunch counter sit in
Greensboro, NC, 1960
Theme Three:
World War II’s Uniqueness
Eisenhower and other senior American officers tour a liberated
concentration camp
The American Century
Signing of the UN Charter, San Francisco, 1945
Unity
Contrast to Later Wars
Vietnam
“Police Action” in Korea
Some Further Reading
• Paul Fussell, Wartime
• Studs Terkel, The Good
War
• E. B. Sledge, With the
Old Breed
• David Nichols, ed.
Ernie’s War
• J. Glenn Gray, The
Warriors
Studs Terkel