25.1: The Coming of World War II

• In the 1930s, East Asia and Central Europe acquired force from two major threats to peace.

  • Japan took Manchuria out of China in September 1931.

  • Japan simply left the league when the League of Nations objected.

• The American public hoped desperately that they would remain out of the war even after Germany, Italy and Japan formed the Axis powers alliance on 27 September 1940 in which they pledged "to stand up and cooperate with one another" over the next ten years.

• The Americans watched the growing European struggle with fear throughout 1940 and1941, while in East Asia the war also escalated.

  • Anticipating problems in the Pacific, Roosevelt moved the Pacific fleet from its base in the Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in May 1940.

25.2: The Great Arsenal of Democracy

• Some days after the declared war of the United States, Congress passed a War Powers Act, creating an executive precedent that would last for a long time after the war ended.

• According to the new legislation, the President could reorganize the federal government and set up new agencies, censor all news and information and shorten the civil liberties and take foreign properly.

• In the end, winning would depend less on military capabilities and superior strategy rather than America's ability overproduce their enemies.

• The wartime economy required a number of new workers unprecedented.

  • The bracero program, negotiated by the United States and Mexico in 1942, brought over 200,000 Mexicans to the U.S. for short-term jobs, mainly as agricultural and railway workers.

• Sioux and Navajos were hired to build decrees and military training centers in large numbers

25.3: The Home Front

• Despite wartime uncertainties, men and women rushed into marriage.

  • The war boom saw personal incomes rise and for the first time since the depression many young couples had set up households.

• No family had more dislocations during war than Japanese Americans who have long been interned.

• After Pearl Harbor, military personnel feared a continental invasion and suspected of secret disloyalty for Japanese Americans.

• During the war, African American activists have been engaged in "Double V," mobilizing not only for the victory of the Allied, but as citizens for their own rights.

  • Black activists have demanded that the post-war civil rights movement be based on fair housing and equal jobs at the minimum.

• The sailors randomly attacked their victims, even chased a young boy into the cinema and stripped him of his clothes as the audience encouraged him.

  • Unrest exploded and lasted 5 days.

25.4: Men and Women in Uniform

• The scale of the Second World War was neither prepared by the army nor the navy.

  • Prior to the outbreak of the European War in 1939, the majority of 200,000 men in the military patrolled the borders of Mexico or took colonial possession.

• A Women's Army Auxiliary Corps was approved in 1942, later changed into the Women's Army Corps by the U.S. Congress.

  • The Women's Army Division, the Women's Air Force Service Pilots and the Women's Reserve Marine Corps, also introduced other bills shortly afterwards.

• The draft brought into the army hundreds of thousands of young Black men and African Americans at a rate 60% above their share of the general population.

  • By 1944, black soldiers accounted for 10 per cent of the military, and around 1 million African Americans in total served in the military in the Second World War.

• At the end of the war, almost 500,000 Americans were killed.

  • The Pacific posed serious threats beyond enemy fire although the European Theater had the greatest number of victims.

25.5: The World at War

• Contrary to the First World War which was fought by armies largely immobilized in trenches with poison gas and a machine-gun fire, the Second World War was a war of attacks marked by surprise.

  • The power of the Axis continued to lose ground after Stalingrad.

• The U.S. Navy stopped Japan's plans for the invasion of Hawaii and Australia in the Pacific that summer.

  • The capacity of the USA to build submarines, landing craft and amphibious vehicles was far outstripped by Germany.

• The U.S. began regaining naval superiority in the Central Pacific six months after Pearl Harbor.

  • American aircraft fought at sea during the Pearl Harbor Angle, which was shown by luck in the big Coral Sea Nave Battle of May 7 to 8, 1942, when American carriers blocked a japanese thrust into Australia.

  • American carriers were very fortunate.

• Almost the entire war saw little information from the US government about what was called the Holocaust.