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Nation of Nations 3/e Davidson, Gienapp, Heyrman, Lytle, and Stoff | |||||
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Nation of Nations 3/e Davidson, Gienapp, Heyrman, Lytle, and Stoff | |||||
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orld War II was in some ways like no other event in American history. It involved more people and resources from more places around the world than the United States had ever been called upon to organize before. Still, those who managed and fought the war could draw on the experience of World War I (Chapter 23). In that war Americans raised an army, produced war materials in huge quantities, and transported them to Europe. On the battlefields they confronted such modern weapons as tanks, submarines, and airplanes. During the 1920s, as Chapter 24 explains, American industry improved products like the automobile and also techniques for manufacturing them. Despite the Great Depression, Americans had the most productive industrial plant in the world at the time Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. And the New Deal had created a variety of agencies that helped prepare the government to face the huge task of organizing the war's truly global crusade. The combination of fighting a depression and a war made the government much more a part of every level of American life, as the following chapters will show.
World War II did not begin with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. That attack culminated a long period of tension caused by Japanese, Italian, and German aggression. Despite that tension, and despite the fact that much of the world had been at war since 1939, when the Japanese attacked, they found Americans both militarily and psychologically unprepared. Pearl Harbor shocked Americans into a war they had been reluctant to fight.
The United States in a Troubled World
The causes of World War II extended back to the peace talks at Versailles that ended World War I. Issues that divided victors and vanquished then, like German reparations and the naval arms race, continued to trouble international relations for another twenty-five years. Despite its economic power, the United States played only an indirect role in the postwar world. The most direct threat to the peace during the 1920s arose from Japan's aspirations in Manchuria. The United States could propose little besides the Stimson Doctrine of non-recognition to restrain Japanese aggression. In Latin America the United States under Hoover and Roosevelt took some constructive steps to become a "Good Neighbor," although that did not lessen in any way American dominance of the region's economies.
Franklin Roosevelt was one of the most internationally minded American Presidents. Yet domestic pressures against foreign political entanglement left him largely powerless to play a role in containing the spread of German and Italian fascism or Japanese militarism. Neutrality legislation limited FDR's power to support victims of aggression like Ethiopia and China. That impotence made him sympathetic to the efforts of French and English leaders, who at Munich in 1938 sought to negotiate an end to Hitler's aggression in Europe. Munich proved a sellout of Czechoslovakia, not a diplomatic triumph. With the German invasion of Poland in 1939 Europe was once again plunged into war. Determined to play a decisive role in Europe, Roosevelt tried to avoid a showdown in the Pacific with Japan. Diplomatic talks produced no compromises, while the Japanese extended their empire and launched a surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor.
A Global War
When the United States entered the war, it suffered a string of demoralizing defeats. But the keys to victory were American factory production, Russian manpower, and the ability of the American, Russian and British allies to coordinate a strategy. They agreed first to defeat Germany and only then to concentrate on defeating Japan. In Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin the Allies had exceptional leadership.
Despite agreement to defeat Germany first, the Allies' first successes came in naval engagements in the Pacific, highlighted by a smashing victory at Midway. After the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa, victories at El Alamein and Stalingrad in late 1942 marked the turning point of the war with Germany. By then American factories were at full production and the armed forces prepared to battle the enemy on all fronts.
Those Who Fought
The war mobilized not just soldiers, but also women and minorities. All of them made unprecedented contributions. Many young men and women found themselves far from home for the first time. For African-Americans service offered an unusual opportunity for education. They volunteered in great numbers. Unfortunately the prejudices of civilian life often led to interracial tensions in the military. Gay men and women had a similar experience. They too had new opportunities and encountered widespread prejudices. Women were a third group who showed their patriotism by joining the services. While they achieved equal status in some ways, they were often restricted socially and allowed only a limited role.
War Production
Before the United States entered the war President Roosevelt spoke of the nation as "the arsenal of democracy." But it became that only after the government eliminated the initial bottlenecks that disrupted war industries. Henry Kaiser was one example of an entrepreneur who helped create a "miracle of production." In the long run organization for war increased the consolidation of key industries into fewer, but larger corporations. Scientists too made critical contributions like radar and the proximity fuse. The fear of German advances in fission research prompted Roosevelt to authorize the Manhattan Project. American scientists raced the Germans to chain the power of the atom to a weapon of war.
War production brought back prosperity. In all facets of the war economy the Roosevelt administration tried to achieve its results through voluntary means such as the sale of war bonds. It resorted to compulsion only when necessary, as for example when it increased taxes to finance the war.
Labor unions generally cooperated in keeping industry functioning smoothly, but a few militant leaders like John L. Lewis insisted on winning major concessions even if it hurt war production. Labor shortages increased the demand for women workers. The need for income, new opportunities, and a sense of patriotism all attracted women to jobs. There they found that many of the old barriers to advancement remained.
A Question of Rights
World War I had resulted in severe infringements of civil rights. The United States had a better record during World War II. German and Italian aliens faced restriction for less than a year. Japanese-Americans suffered a harsher fate as the government, in response to hysteria and bigotry, herded them into concentration camps. Even the Supreme Court gave its blessing to this injustice.
At the same time, traditional forms of prejudice limited the opportunities of African-Americans and Hispanics. Black leader A. Philip Randolph pressured Roosevelt into creating the Fair Employment Practices Commission, which in some cases was able to end job discrimination. The movement of minorities into industrial centers outside the South often created frictions, which in Detroit, New York, and Los Angeles erupted into violence. Despite limited gains during the war, minority leaders had laid the groundwork for future activism.
Though the war had bipartisan support, partisan politics continued. The foes of New Deal reform used the war as an excuse to end programs they opposed. Still, Roosevelt managed to win an unprecedented victory over Thomas Dewey in the 1944 presidential election. To satisfy conservative Democrats he chose Harry Truman of Missouri as his vice president.
Winning the War and the Peace
Winning the war required a coordinated military and diplomatic strategy in both Europe and the Pacific. The Allies first drove Italy from the war before Anglo-American forces stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. After a ferocious German counterattack failed during the Battle of the Bulge, the Allies marched towards Berlin. By that time the forces of General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz had moved within bomber range of Japan.
At a series of wartime meetings, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met to plan a global strategy, and lay the grounds for the postwar peace. They disagreed on many key points, including the best way to preserve peace. Still, they managed to compromise their differences in favor of the war effort. The high point of cooperation came at Teheran in 1943, when the three leaders agreed to the D-Day invasion of Europe. By the time they met at Yalta in February 1945, Roosevelt had secured a Soviet pledge to enter the war against Japan, but serious divisions had arisen over Poland and Germany.
Yalta marked the final episode of Roosevelt's diplomatic stewardship. Roosevelt's concessions to Stalin on Poland, Eastern Europe, and Asia were controversial but unavoidable, given the Soviet Union's wartime sacrifices and successes. Having led the Allies skillfully, Roosevelt neither enjoyed the fruits of victory nor suffered the failures of the peace, for he died weeks before the German surrender. To Harry Truman fell the task of bringing the war to an end and the peace to fruition.
Victory brought a series of shocks. In liberating Germany and Poland, Allied armies confronted the grisly evidence of the Holocaust. Hitler had ordered the systematic extermination of Europe's Jews and other groups stigmatized by Nazi ideology. Only as the war neared its end was the War Refugee Board established to assist European Jews.
To Truman fell the responsibility of bringing the United Nations and new international economic institutions into being, as well as managing relations with the Soviet Union. Truman spent two weeks meeting with the British and Russians at Potsdam in Germany without resolving any important issues of the peace. Even more consequential for postwar affairs, the first successful test of an atomic bomb led to its use on two Japanese cities. The horror of those attacks brought the war swiftly to an end. "World War II changed everything," an admiral remarked. It especially promoted bigness and consolidation in government, business, and agriculture. And it made the United States the world's greatest power, with a monopoly on the world's most awesome weapon.
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