The Ideological War

The Four Freedoms (1941)

War and the American State

• Mass mobilization• Unemployment plummets• Massive expansion of govt• Founding of military-industrial complex

Trouble Brewing

• Japan invades China (1931)• Mussolini invades Ethiopia (1935)• League of Nations powerless• Fascist Francisco Franco leads rebellion against

democratic govt in Spain

Revanchism

• French for “revenge”• Hitler wants to reunite Germanic peoples, annexes

Austria• Flouts Treaty of Versailles by pursuing massive

rearmament• Supports Mussolini and Franco• UK and France want to avoid war, follow policy of

“appeasement” toward Hitler• Takes over Czechoslovakia (1938-9)

Reluctance

• Americans believed WWI was mistake• Many companies did business with Germany

and Japan• Some Italian and German-Americans

supported fascists• Irish-Americans still hated Britain

1939

I sit in one of the divesOn Fifty-second StreetUncertain and afraidAs the clever hopes expireOf a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the brightAnd darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives;The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night.

W.H. Auden

Last Straw

• Hitler invades Poland (1939)• UK, France declare war• Nazis overrun Scandinavia, Belgium,

Netherlands• Occupy Paris by 1940• Germany, Italy, Japan join forces (the Axis)

Arc de Capitulation

• “Vichy” govt collaborates with Nazis in France• UK stands alone• Battle of Britain• Winston Churchill– Conservative Prime Minister

Pearl Harbor

• Japan attacks US base in Hawaii• Dec 7, 1941: “a day that will live in infamy”• Destroys US battleships and kills 2000

Americans• FDR declares war• Germany declares war on us next day

Two Theatres

• Most American troops in Pacific• Need to reverse Japanese advance• Japan took Philippines, Guam, etc.• US and UK invade North Africa to fight

Germans and Italians

The Battle for Europe

• D-Day (6/6/1944) – huge invasion of France• 200k American, British, Canadian troops land

on beaches of Normandy• 1 million follow• Biggest land-sea operation in history• Paris liberated by August

The War at Home

• Govt workers quadruple to 4 million• High taxes to support war• Govt coordinates war production• Car plants converted to making tanks, planes

Rosie the Riveter

• 15 million men in military• Women = 1/3 of workforce• Some wanted to stay working after war• But men saw this as temporary

War for Freedom?

• Japanese-Americans forced into internment camps

Zoot Suit Riots (1943)

A. Philip Randolph

Civil Rights

• Labor leader Randolph plans March on Washington (1941) to protest discrimination in war industries, military

• FDR issues executive order• Fair Employment Practices Commission• 1st federal agency since Reconstruction to seek

equal opportunity for African Americans

Malmedy Massacre, 1944

Endgame

• Allies setback at Battle of the Bulge (late 1944)• Bloodiest battle for US• Allies press advantage in 1945• Soviet and Polish troops capture Berlin and

Germany surrenders• “V-E Day” – 5/8/45

Defeating Japan

• US retakes Philippines and other islands (1945)

• Firebombs Japanese cities and cuts off imports with submarines

• Shocks world by dropping two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (8/6/45 and 8/9/45)

Yalta Conference, February 1945: Churchill, FDR, Stalin

Potsdam Conference, July 1945: Churchill, Truman, and Stalin