WWII

1. WWII Chapter 35

2. Women in the Defense Plants • The popular belief pre-WWII was that women should remain in the home and allow men to have the jobs to support their families • The wartime labor shortage meant that married women were now being recruited to work • Many African American women got jobs in factories instead of in domestic service • Women did not receive the same pay as men for doing the same job, despite attempts at government intervention • Most women left the factories after the war, though some wanted to continue to work

3. Rosie the Riveter • All day long, whether rain or shine • She’s a part of the assembly line • She’s makin’ history • Workin’ for victory • Rosie the Riveter • Keeps a sharp look out for sabotage • Sittin’ up there on the fuselage • That little friend can do • More than the men can do • Rosie the Riveter • Rosie’s got a boyfriend, Charlie • Charlie, he’s a Marine • Rosie is protectin’ Charlie • Workin’ overtime on the riveting machine • When they gave her a production E • She was as proud as a girl could be • There’s somethin’ true about • Red, white, and blue about • Rosie the Riveter • Everyone stops to admire the scene • Rosie at work on the B-19 • She’s never twittery • Nervous or jittery • Rosie the Riveter • Once she’s smeared with oil and grease • Doing her bit for the old land-lease • She keeps the gang around • They like to hang around • Rosie the Riveter • Rosie buys a lot of war bonds • That girl really has sense • Wishes she could purchase more bonds • Puttin’ all her cash into the national defense • Senator Jones, who’s in the know • Shouted these words on the radio • Berlin will hear about • Moscow will cheer about • Rosie the Riveter • Rosie ……. the Riveter

4. African Americans Demand War Work • Factories hired women, but resisted hiring African Americans • A. Philip Randolph (head of a major African American railroad worker union) informed FDR that he would organize a march on Washington to secure jobs for African Americans • FDR issued an order stating that there could be no discrimination in the defense industries or the government based on “race, creed, color, or national origin”

5. African Americans in the War • The military was segregated for most of the war and at the beginning African Americans were not allowed in combat • FDR realized that many of the people who reelected him were African American and he ordered that they be allowed to serve in combat • The Tuskegee Airmen distinguished themselves as fighter pilots in the Mediterranean

6. Mexicans Become Farmworkers • Over 200,000 Mexicans came to the USA by the request of our government to help in the harvest of fruits and vegetables in the Southwest and to maintain railroads • Was called the “Bracero(Worker)Program” • Continued until 1964

7. A Nation on the Move Housing Crisis Racism Explodes Into Violence • People moved to cities to be closer to available work, but the cities had nowhere to put them • The government used over $1.2 billion to create public housing, schools, and community centers • African Americans moved out of the South again into the North and West • The worst racial violence of the war erupted in Detroit 1943 • On a hot summer day nearly 100,000 people crowded into a park on the Detroit River to cool off • Fights erupted between groups of white and African American teenage girls, triggering riots across the city that left 34 people dead

8. Japanese Internment • Hostility toward Japanese Americans increased after the attack on Pearl Harbor • Americans felt that there were Japanese spies everywhere • Everyone of Japanese ancestry (110,000 people) regardless of citizenship was removed from the west coast to camps in remote areas

9. Japanese Internment • They were not told where they were going or what would happen to their lives back home: • “When we were sent to Fort Lincoln [Bismarck, ND] I asked the FBI men about my fishing nets. They said ‘Don’t worry. Everything is going to be taken care of.’ But I never saw my nets again, nor my brand-new 1941 Plymouth, nor our furniture. It all just disappeared. I lost everything.” – Henry Murakami • Korematsu v. United States • Fred Korematsu (born in U.S., but Japanese ancestry) ordered by government to move to internment camp, refused, was arrested • Took case to Supreme Court where he lost • Conviction finally overturned in 1983

10. Legal Challenges and Japanese Americans in the Military • Some Japanese Americans challenged the internment and 4 cases went to the Supreme Court • It was determined that the internment was constitutional, but many people still didn’t feel right about it • Upon release, in early 1945, many Japanese Americans had lost everything • In 1988, Congress passed a law awarding each surviving Japanese American internee a tax-free $20,000 and the government officially apologized • The military refused to accept Japanese Americans into the armed forces until early 1943, but when they were allowed many signed up • The soldiers of the all-Japanese 442nd Regimental Combat Team won more medals for bravery than any other unit in U.S. history

11. Daily Life in Wartime America • Government agencies were created to regulate wages and prices to control inflation • Many items were rationed to make sure there was enough for the soldiers • People got ration books of small coupons that they had to redeem whenever they shopped to make sure they weren’t buying too much of something • Victory gardens were planted to have more produce available in the home • Scrap drives were organized to collect necessary materials to make items for war

12. Paying for the War • The war cost more than the government had spent from Washington’s administration to the end of FDR’s second term • To raise money the government raised taxes, but not as much as FDR wanted them to • Tax money only covered about 45% of the expenses of the war • The rest came from people buying war bonds

13. Soldiers and Segregation • Strict segregation of white and African American troops • Troops also faced segregation at home: • One GI recalled: “ ‘You know we don’t serve coloreds here,’ the man repeated… We ignored him, and just stood there inside the door, staring at what we had come to see – the German prisoners of war who were having lunch at the counter… We continued to stare. This was really happening. It was no jive talk. The people of Salina [KS] would serve these enemy soldiers and turn away black American GIs.” – Lloyd Brown • 1942 Poll: 6 out of 10 whites believed black Americans were satisfied with existing conditions and needed no new opportunities • CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) was created and organized sit-ins at lunch counters to fight for equality

14. Riots and Relocation • Most men wore a “victory suit” during the war, which used as little fabric as possible to conserve it for the war • Zoot suits used lots of fabric, many saw them as unpatriotic • Many Mexican American teenagers had begun wearing zoot suits and when some sailors heard they were attacking other sailors they stormed into many Hispanic neighborhoods in Los Angeles and attacked the teenagers, cutting their hair and ripping off their suits • Police did nothing to stop it, but the city of L.A. eventually banned zoot suits

15. Women Join the Armed Forces • Women were allowed to join the military, but were not allowed to serve in combat • They were needed to “release a man for combat” and served as clerks, nurses, or (rarely) pilots

16. Nazi Policies • Nuremberg Laws • stripped Jews of their citizenship • Outlawed marriages between Jews and non-Jews • Most lost their jobs or had to sell their businesses to Aryans • Jewish doctors and lawyers were forbidden to serve non-Jews • Jewish students were expelled from public schools • A Jew was anyone who had three or four Jewish grandparents, regardless of his or her current religion or someone who had at least two Jewish grandparents and practiced Judaism • Nazis changed the middle names of Jewish women to Sarah and men to Israel • Eventually all Jews in Germany and German-occupied areas had to wear yellow stars marked “Jew” on their clothing

17. Hitler’s Police • Hitler formed the Gestapo as secret police who pursued enemies of the Nazi regime • He also formed the SS (Schutzstaffel) an elite guard that became the private army of the Nazi party • The SS guarded concentration camps under harsh conditions • The camps were originally designed for political prisoners, but later held anyone who the Nazis considered “undesirable”: • Jews • Homosexuals • Jehovah’s Witnesses • Gypsies • The Homeless

18. Refugees Seek an Escape • When Nazi thugs across Germany and Austria looted and destroyed Jewish stores, houses and synagogues (Kristallnacht) and thousands of Jews were shipped off to concentration camps in one night, Germany’s remaining Jews sought any possible means to leave the country • Many Jews sought protection in the United States, Latin America, and Palestine • Most countries, including the United States, did not want to open their doors to immigrants because jobs were limited due to the Great Depression

19. The Einsatzgruppen • Hitler ordered the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads) to shoot Communist political leaders and all Jews in German-occupied territory of the USSR • Typically, they would round up their victims, drive them to freshly dug pits and shoot them into them • In a ravine outside of Kiev the Nazis killed more than 33,000 Jews in two days • Hitler saw this method as unsuitable for the conquered nations of western Europe and had death camps built to commit the genocide

20. The Death Camps • The Nazis chose poison gas as the most effective way to kill people • The gas chamber was disguised as a shower room in Auschwitz • These camps were not the same as concentration camps because they existed primarily for mass murder rather than forced labor and prisons • Some people were kept alive and forced to work or had cruel medical experiments performed on them before being sent to the gas chambers • In Auschwitz 12,000 people could be gassed and cremated in one day with as many as 1.5 million people murdered overall

21. Fighting Back • Some resistance groups rose up in Poland and France and caused riots against the Nazis • Escape was the most common form of resistance • Most people who tried to escape were unsuccessful, and those who did escape were usually caught • Some, however, were able to get out and get word to the outside world of what was happening

22. Rescue and Liberation • The U.S. government knew about the death camps as early as November 1942, but the press showed little interest in reporting the story and Congress didn’t raise immigration quotas • Roosevelt finally created the War Refugee Board, over the objection of Congress, in 1944 to try to help people threatened by the Nazis • The WRB saved some 200,000 lives by helping them to escape to other countries and in a few cases bringing them to the U.S. • As the Allies advanced, the Nazis abandoned the camps outside of Germany and forced their prisoners to march with them to camps on German soil

23. Americans Join the Struggle • U-Boats were still successful in the Atlantic • Churchill (British Prime Minister) and Roosevelt met to discuss progress after the Allied campaign in North Africa was successful: they would accept nothing less than the unconditional surrender of Italy, Germany, and Japan • General Patton and his troops invaded the island of Sicily to move to mainland Italy and many Italians lost faith in their leadership and ousted Mussolini • He was quickly restored to power by Hitler • Eventually, the Allies captured Rome and within a few months the Germans surrendered

24. War in the Soviet Union • Hitler broke his earlier pact with Stalin and launched an attack against the USSR • The Germans were easily able to invade Russia and many people welcomed them as liberators before troops introduced forced labor and began executing civilians • Stalin adopted a scorched earth policy when the Germans pressed on and pleaded for help from the Allies • Finally the USSR was able to push Germany back when winter arrived and the Germans were unprepared and easily surrounded • The Battle of Stalingrad would be the turning point of the war in Eastern Europe

25. D-Day • The Allies developed “Operation Overlord”, led by General Eisenhower, to invade Western Europe • Midnight June 6, 1944: 4,600 invasion craft and warships crossed the English Channel and about 1,000 RAF bombers pounded German defenses in Normandy, France while 23,000 British and American soldiers parachuted behind enemy lines • At dawn on D-Day the invasion began with the largest landing by sea in history • Hitler hesitated, fearing a second attack, allowing for a more forceful Allied invasion • Within a week 500,000 men had come ashore and by late July the Allied force in France would number more than 2 million troops

27. Liberating France • Patton used a blitzkrieg to open a hole in the German lines and moved out of Normandy • The French Resistance, aided by the U.S., liberated Paris • British and Canadian forces freed Belgium and a combined Allied force attacked the Germans in the Netherlands • Americans crossed the western border of Germany • All of these advances happened very quickly, leaving the Germans little time to react

28. The Battle of the Bulge • The Nazis fought desperately to defend their conquests and Hitler reinforced the army with thousands of new draftees (some as young as 15) • Germany launched an attack in Belgium and Luxembourg, pushing back the U.S. First Army and forming a bulge in the Allied line • Many small units, cut off from the rest of the U.S. army, fought against overwhelming odds • Eisenhower ordered more troops to the scene and the combined First and Third armies knocked the Germans back and restarted their drive into Germany • This was the largest battle in Western Europe and the largest battle ever fought by the U.S. Army • After this battle most Nazi leaders recognized that the war was lost

29. The Battle of the Bulge • Hitler wanted to make one last ditch effort to win the war and attacked the American troops by surprise • As the troops raced Westward their lines bulged out, giving the battle its name • The Americans took over a town called Bastogne and Germans tried to surround and take over • General Patton moved quickly to prevent this and the Germans felt heavy losses

30. The Yalta Conference • Before the German surrender, the leaders of the U.S., Britain, France, and the Soviet Union met to discuss the plan for Germany and the postwar world • They agreed to split Germany into four zones (each controlled by a major Ally) • Stalin agreed to allow elections in the nations of Eastern Europe that were liberated from the Germans and promised to enter the war against Japan within three months of Germany’s surrender (he would not fulfill these promises)

31. The War in Europe Ends • On the eastern front, at any given time, 9 million soldiers were fighting • 11 million Soviet and 3 million German soldiers died (more than 2/3 of all soldiers killed in the war) • Soviet troops fought their way into Berlin • Hitler’s generals advised him to flee the city, but he chose to commit suicide in an underground bunker • A few days later, Germany’s remaining troops surrendered • American soldiers and civilians celebrated V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day) but knew they still had to defeat Japan

33. The Bataan Death March • The attack on Pearl Harbor was in hopes that U.S. forces would withdraw and leave them access to the natural resources of Southeast Asia • Americans and Filipinos had to surrender control of the Philippines to the Japanese • Captured soldiers, already in poor physical shape due to lack of food and medical care, were forced to march almost 70 miles • Many were beaten and tortured along the way and all were denied water and rest • At least 10,000 prisoners died and more were executed when they were seen as too weak to keep up • Survivors were sent to prison camps were 15,000 more died

34. Allied Victories Turn the Tide Battle of Midway Battle of Guadalcanal • After Pearl Harbor, the U.S. was focused on getting a handle on the situation in the Pacific • Japanese Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, who planned Pearl Harbor’s attack, wanted to lure us into a battle near Midway Island (which was vital to the defense of Hawaii) • The Battle of Midway was fought from the air • U.S. warplanes surprised Japan’s carriers when planes were being refueled and reloaded with bombs • Four Japanese carriers were sunk, 250 planes were destroyed, and most of Japan’s naval pilots were killed • Japan was never again able to launch any more offensive operations in the Pacific • The Japanese were building airfields in Guadalcanal to threaten nearby Allied bases and lines of communication to Australia • When 11,000 marines landed the 2,200 Japanese defenders fled into the jungle • The marines fought in the swamps and made easy targets for Japanese snipers hidden in the trees • Both sides fought hard for five months, but eventually U.S. marines took control of the waters around the island, limiting Japanese reinforcements from arriving • As they became outnumbered, the Japanese surrendered

35. Struggle for the Islands • U.S. forces began island-hopping (attacking specific islands that would cut off supply lines to the enemy) • MacArthur convinced FDR that we needed to free the Filipino people, so we invaded • At the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Japanese directed almost every warship still afloat to attack the U.S. Navy • This was the first battle that used kamikaze planes to inflict maximum damage • The U.S. force virtually destroyed the Japanese navy and won • It took a year of fighting on land, but the Allies eventually regained control of the Philippines

36. Iwo Jima and Okinawa • Bomber pilots were having trouble getting to Japan because of the long flight without refueling, so American military planners decided to invade Iwo Jima so the planes could refuel • The Japanese ruthlessly fought back, but the marines continued on • Meanwhile, pilots began to use firebombs filled with napalm (jellied gasoline) to start fires that would destroy cities like Tokyo • Okinawa was the last obstacle to an Allied invasion of Japan and most of the inhabitants pledged to fight to the death • We wanted the Japanese to surrender unconditionally, but they wanted to keep their emperor in power, so they chose to fight • The invasion of Okinawa is second only to the Normandy invasion in size • After more than 2 months of fighting, the Japanese surrendered and the Allies had a clear path to Japan

37. The Manhattan Project • FDR received a letter from Albert Einstein, a Jewish physicist who fled Europe, in August 1939 suggesting that an incredibly powerful new type of bomb could be built by the Germans • FDR wanted to build the bomb before the Germans and organized the top secret “Manhattan Project” • July 16, 1945 scientists field-tested the world’s first atomic bomb in the desert of New Mexico • It blew a huge crater into the earth and shattered windows 125 miles away • As he watched, J. Robert Oppenheimer remembered the words of the BhagavadGita (Hindu holy book): “Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.”

38. “Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now… When they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon and the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”-Harry S. Truman

39. “The Bomb” • We had other alternatives to end the war: • Massive invasion • Naval blockade to starve Japan • Demonstration of the new weapon on a deserted island • Softening demands for unconditional surrender • Heavy American casualties at Iwo Jima and Okinawa led the committee that gathered to discuss the options to decide that the Bomb was the only option • After Okinawa, Japan was given an ultimatum: surrender unconditionally or face “prompt and utter destruction”. Japan did not reply. • August 6, 1945 the first atomic bomb “Little Boy” was dropped on Hiroshima • The bombing stunned the Japanese and three days later we dropped a second bomb “Fat Man” on Nagasaki • The Japanese were forced to surrender on August 14, 1945

40. Creating the United Nations • Roosevelt had wanted to create a world organization to prevent another world war • It would be called the United Nations (UN) • The UN could investigate international problems, propose solutions, and send peacekeeping forces into nations who were involved in disputes

41. The Nuremberg Trials • After seeing, firsthand, the horrors of the camps the Allies placed many former Nazi leaders on trial and charged them with crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes • The tribunal firmly rejected the Nazis’ arguments that they were only “following orders”

42. Putting the Enemy on Trial • Trials were held in Germany and in Japan for war crimes committed by military leaders • 154 people would be prosecuted, with only 3 acquitted • All others served prison sentences or were executed • Of the 24 Nazi defendants, 12 received the death sentence • We chose not to prosecute the Japanese emperor for fear that the Japanese would stage an uprising