Chapter 35: America In World War II

I. The Allies Trade Space for Time

• The United States was the mightiest military power on earth—potentially. But wars are won with bullets, not blueprints. Indeed America came perilously close to losing the war to the well-armed aggressors before it could begin to throw its full weight onto the scales America's task was far more complex and back breaking than World war I. 
• It had to feed, clothe, and arm itself, as well as transport its forces to regions as far separated as Britain and Burma.
• 1. When Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, millions of
     infuriated Americans, especially on the west coast, instantly changed
     their views from isolationist to avenger.
  2. However, America, led by the wise Franklin D. Roosevelt, resisted
     such pressures, instead taking a “get Germany first”
     approach to the war, for if Germany were to defeat Britain before the
     Allies could beat Japan, there would be no stopping Hitler and his men.
     • Meanwhile, just enough troops would be sent to fight Japan to keep it in check.
• America's task was far more complex and back-breaking than during World War II.

II. The Shock of War

1. National unity was no worry, thanks to the electrifying blow by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.
2. American communists had denounced the Anglo-French "imperialist" war before Hitler attacked Stalin in 1941, but they now clamored for an unmitigated assault on the Axis  powers. 
3. The pro-Hitlerities in the United States melted away, while millions of Italian Americans and Germans loyally supported the nation's ware program.
4. After the attack at Pearl Harbor, national unity was strong as steel, and the few Hitler supporters in America faded away.
5. Most of America’s ethnic groups assimilated even faster due
   to WWII, since in the decades before the war, few immigrants had been
   allowed into America.
   • 110,000 Japanese-Americans were taken from their homes and herded into internment camps where their properties and freedoms were taken away.
   • The 1944 case of Korematsu v. U.S. affirmed the constitutionality of these camps.
   • It took more than 40 years before the U.S. admitted fault and made $20,000 reparation payments to camp survivors.
6. Once the war began, the New Deal programs were cut, such as the
   Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration, and the
   National Youth Administration.
7. WWII was no idealistic crusade, as most Americans didn’t even
   know what the Atlantic Charter (declaration of U.S. goals going into
   the war such as to fight Germany first, and Japan second) was.

III. Building the War Machine

1. The war crisis caused the drooping American economy to attention.
2. As of that time, there were massive military orders (over $100 billion in 1942 alone) ended the Great Depression by creating demand for jobs and production.
3. Shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser was dubbed “Sir Launchalot” because his methods of ship assembly churned out one ship every 14 days!
4. The War Production Board halted manufacture of nonessential items
   such as passenger cars, and when the Japanese seized vital rubber
   supplies in British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, the U.S. imposed
   a national speed limit and gasoline rationing to save tires.
5. Farmers rolled out more food, but the new sudden spurt in
   production made prices soar—a problem that was finally solved by
   the regulation of prices by the Office of Price Administration.
6. Meanwhile labor unions pledged not to strike during the war, some did anyway.
   • The United Mine Workers was one such group and was led by John L. Lewis.
   • In June 1943, Congress passed the Smith-Connally Anti-Strike Act,
     which let the federal government seize and operate industries
     threatened by or under strikes.
   • Fortunately, strikes accounted for less than 1% of total working hours of the U.S. wartime laboring force.
   • American workers, on the whole, were commendably commited to the war effort. 

IV. Manpower and Womanpower

1. The armed services had nearly 15 million men and 216,000 women, and
   some of these “women in arms” included the WAACS (Army),
   the WAVES (Navy), and SPARS (Coast Guard).
2. Because of these exemptions, the draft left the nation's farms and factories so short of personnel that new workers had to be found. 
3. The so-called, braceros, had to be called in. 
4. An agreement with Mexico in 1942 brought thousands of Mexican agricultural workers called braceros, across the border to harvest the fruit and grain crops to the west. 
5. With the men in the military, women took up jobs in the workplace,
   symbolized by “Rosie the Riveter,” and upon war’s
   end, many did not return to their homes as in World War I.
   • It must be noted that the female revolution into the work force was
     not as great as commonly exaggerated. At the end of the war, 2/3 of the
     women did return home; the servicemen that came home to them helped
     produce a baby boom that is still being felt today.

V. Wartime Migrations

1. The war also proved to be a demographic cauldron, churning and shifting the American population.
2. Many of the fifteen million men and women in uniform, having seen new sights and glimpsed new horizons,chose not to go home again at wars end.
3. War industries sucked people into broom towns like Los Angeles, Detroit, Seattle, and Baton Rouge.
4.  Many were forced many people to move to new places, and many young folks went to and saw new cities far from home.
5. FDR used the war as an excuse to pump lots of money into the
   stagnant South to revitalize it, helping to start the blossoming of the
   “Sunbelt.”
   • Still, some 1.6 million blacks left the South for better places,
     and explosive tensions developed over black housing, employment, and
     segregation facilities.
6. Philip Randolph, leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters,
   threatened a “Negro March to Washington” in 1941 to get
   better rights and treatment.
7. Roosevelt's response was to issue an executive order forbidding discrimination in defense industries.
8. In additon, he also established the Fair Employment Practices
   Commission to discourage racism and oppression in the workplace, and
   while Blacks in the army still suffered degrading discrimination (i.e.
   separate blood banks), they still used the war as a rallying cry
   against dictators abroad and racism at home—overall gaining power
   and strength.
9. The war helped to emboiden blacks in their struggle for equality.
   • Membership to the NAACP passed the half-million mark, and a new
     organization, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), was founded in
     1942.
10. In 1944, the invention of the mechanical cotton picker, by Eli Whitney, made the need for muscle
    nonexistent, so blacks that used to pick cotton could now leave, since
    they were no longer needed.
    • They left the South and took up residence in urban areas.
11. Native Americans also left their reservations during the war, finding work in the cities or joining the army.
    • Some 25,000 Native Americans were in the army, and the Navajo and
      Comanches were “code talkers,” relaying military orders in
      the own language—a “code” that was never broken by
      the Axis Powers.
12. Afterwards, the whole idea of “rubbing of the races” did spark riots and
    cause tension, such as the 1943 attack on some Mexican-American navy
    men in Los Angeles and the Detroit race riot (occurring in the same
    year) that killed 25 blacks and 9 whites.

VI. Holding the Home Front

1. Despite, America being on the home front, those were the ones who suffered the least from the war, and nonetheless, the aftermath of the war.
2. America was the only country to emerge after the war relatively
   unscathed, and in fact, it was much better off after the war than
   before.
   • The gross national product more than doubled, as did corporate profits.
3. Despite all of the New Deal programs, it was the plethora of spending during WWII that lifted America from its Great Depression.
4. 
   
   • The wartime bill amounted to more than $330 billion—more than
     the combined costs of all the previous American wars together.
   • The remainder was borrowed.
   • While income tax was expanded to make four times as many people pay
     as before, most of the payments were borrowed, making the national debt
     soar from $49 billion to $259 billion (the war had cost as much as $10
     million per hour at one point).
   • When production finally slipped into high gear, the war was costing about $ millionan hour!

VII. The Rising Sun in the Pacific

1. The Japanese overran the lands that they descended upon, winning
   more land with less losses than ever before and conquering Guam, Wake,
   the Philippines, Hong Kong, British Malaya, Burma (in the process
   cutting the famed Burma Road), the Dutch East Indies, and even pushing
   into China.
2. When the Japanese took over the Philippines, U.S. General Douglas
   MacArthur had to sneak out of the place, but he vowed to return to
   liberate the islands; he went to Australia.
3. They surrended. Had to walk some 85 mile march.
   • On May 6, 1942, the island fortress of Corregidor, in Manila Harbor, surrendered.

VIII. Japan’s High Tide at Midway 

1. Aggressive warriors from Japan, making hay while the Rising Sune shone, pushed relentlessly southwards.
2. They invaded the turtle-shaped island 0f New Guinea, north of Australia, and landed on the Solomon Islands, from which they threatened America itself. 
3. The Japanese onrush was finally checked in the Coral Sea by
   American and Australian forces in the world’s 1st naval battle
   where the ships never saw one another.
4.  When the Japanese tried to seize Midway Island, they
   were forced back by U.S. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz during fierce
   fighting from June 3-6, 1942.
   • Midway proved to be the turning point that stopped Japanese expansion.
   • Admiral Raymond A. Spruance also helped maneuver the fleet to win,
     and this victory marked the turning point in the war in the Pacific.
   • No longer would the Japanese take any more land, as the U.S. began
     a process called “island hopping,” where the Allies would
     bypass heavily fortified islands, take over neighboring islands, and
     starve the resistant forces to death with lack of supplies and constant
     bombing saturation, to push back the Japanese.

IX. American Leapfrogging Toward Tokyo

1. Following the heartening victory at Midway, the United Staes for the first time was able to seize the initiative in the Pacific. 
2. Americans won at Guadalcanal in August 1942 and then got New Guinea by August 1944.
3. The U.S. also retook the Aleutian Islands of
   Attu and Kiska in August of 1943, and in November of that year,
   “bloody Tarawa” and Makin, members of the Gilbert Islands,
   fell to the Allies.
4. American and Australian forces under Gen. Mac Arthur, meanwhile had been hanging on a courageously to the southeastern tip of New Guinea, the last buffer protecting Australia. 
5. The scales of war began to gradually tip when as the American navy, including submarines, inflicted lethal losses on Japanese supply ships and troop carriers. 
6. Conquest of the north coast of New Guinea was fought by the Gen. Mac ARTHUR AS HE WAS making his way westwards. 
7. The U.S. with many divisions began "leapfrogging" the Japanese-held islands in the Pacific. 
8. Brilliant success crowned the American attacks on the Japanese island strongholds in the Pacific, where Admiral Nimitz skilfully coordinated the efforts of the naval, air, and ground units. 
9. American sailors shelled the beachheads with artillery, U.S.
   Marines stormed ashore, and American bombers attacked the Japanese,
   such as Lt. Robert J. Albert who piloted a B-24 “Liberator”
   on 36 missions including his final run before returning home. That
   mission was a record 18 hour and 25 minute strike that he piloted, even
   though his tour of duty was complete, just so his men would not fly
   behind a rookie pilot.
10. In January and February of 1944, the Marshall Islands fell to the U.S.
11. The assault on the Marianas (including Guam) began on June 19,
    1944, and with superior planes such as the “Hellcat”
    fighter and a U.S. victory the next day in the Battle of the Philippine
    Sea, the U.S. rolled on, taking the islands and beginning
    around-the-clock bombing raids over Tokyo and other parts of mainland
    Japan.
12. The following day, in the Battle of the Phillipine Sea, U.S. naval forces sank several Japanese carriers. 
13. The Japanese navy never recovered from these massive losses of planes, pilots, and ships. 

X. The Allied Halting of Hitler

1. Hitler had enetered the war with a formidable fleet of ultramodern submarines, which operated in wolfpacks.  U-boats were the primary source of conflict between the U.S. and Germany because they proved very effective, but the breaking of the Germans’
   “enigma” code helped pinpoint those subs better.
   • It wasn’t until war’s end that the true threat of the
     German submarines was known, as it was discovered that Hitler had been
     about to unleash a new U-boat that could remain underwater indefinitely
     and cruise at 17 knots underwater.
2. These ships traveled from the North Atlantic, the Carribean, and the Gulf of Mexico. 
3. In May 1942, the British launched a massive raid on Cologne, France, and in August, the U.S. air corps joined them.
   • The Germans, led by the “Desert Fox” Marshall Edwin
     Rommel, drove to Egypt, dangerously close to the Suez Canal, but late
     in October 1942, British General Bernard Montgomery defeated him at El
     Alamein, west of Cairo.
4. On the Soviet front, the Russians launched a new, blistering
   counteroffensive, regaining about 2/3 of the land they had lost before
   a year later.

XI. A Second Front from North Africa to Rome

• Anglo-American losses at this time could beonly in the thousands. By war’s end, the

grave had closed over some 20 million Soviets, and a great swath of their country, equivalent in the

United States to the area from Chicago to the Atlantic seaboard, had been laid waste. Small wonder that Kremlin leaders clamored for a second front to divert the German strength westward.

Many Americans, including FDR, were eager to begin a diversionary invasion of France in 1942 or

1943. They feared that the Soviets, unable to hold out forever against Germany, might make a separate peace as they had in 1918 and leave the Western Allies to face Hitler’s fury alone.

• But British military planners, remembering their appalling losses in 1914–1918, were not enthusiastic about a frontal assault on German-held France. It might end in disaster. They preferred to attack Hitler’s Fortress Europe through the “soft underbelly” of the Mediterranean. Faced with British boot-dragging and a woeful lack of resources, the Americans reluctantly agreed to postpone a massive invasion of Europe.
• An assault on French-held North Africa was a compromise second front. The highly secret attack, launched in November 1942, was headed by a gifted and easy-smiling American general, Dwight D. (“Ike”) Eisenhower, a master of organization andconciliation. As a joint Allied operation ultimately involving some 400,000 men (British, Canadian, French, and chiefly American) and about 850 ships, the invasion was the mightiest waterborne effort upto that time in history. After savage fighting, the remnants of the German-Italian army were finally trapped in Tunisia and surrendered in May 1943.

1. The Allies found bitter resistance in Italy, but Sicily finally fell in August 1943.
   • Italian dictator Mussolini was deposed, and a new government was set up.
     • Two years later, he and his mistress were lynched and killed.
   • Germany didn’t leave Italy, though, and for many months, more
     fighting and stalemates occurred, especially at Monte Cassino, where
     Germans were holed up.
2. The Allies finally took Rome on June 4, 1944, and it wasn’t
   until May 2, 1945, that Axis troops in Italy finally surrendered.
3. Though long and tiring, the Italian invasion did open up Europe,
   divert some of Hitler’s men from the Soviet front, and helping
   cause Italy to fall.

XII. D-Day: June 6, 1944

1. At the Tehran Conference, the Big Three (FDR, Churchill, and Josef
   Stalin, leader of Russia) met and agreed that the Soviets and Allies
   would launch simultaneous attacks.
2. The Allies began plans for a gigantic cross-channel invasion, and
   command of the whole operation was entrusted to General Eisenhower.
   • Meanwhile, MacArthur received a fake army to use as a ruse to Germany.
3. The point of attack was French Normandy, and on June 6, 1944, D-Day
   began—the amphibious assault on Normandy. After heavy resistance,
   Allied troops, some led by General George S. Patton, finally clawed
   their way onto land, across the landscape, and deeper into France.
   • With the help of the “French underground,” Paris was freed in August of 1944.

XIII. FDR: The Fourth-Termite of 1944

1. Republicans nominated Thomas E. Dewey, a young, liberal governor of
   New York, and paired him with isolationist John W. Bricker of Ohio.
2. FDR was the Democratic lock, but because of his age, the vice
   presidential candidate was carefully chosen to be Harry S. Truman, who
   won out over Henry A. Wallace—an ill-balanced and unpredictable
   liberal.

XIV. Roosevelt Defeats Dewey

1. Dewey went on a rampaging campaign offensive while FDR, stuck with WWII problems, could not go out much.
   • The new Political Action Committee of the CIO contributed
     considerable money. It was organized to get around the law banning
     direct use of union funds for political purposes.
2. In the end, Roosevelt stomped Dewey, 432 to 99, the fourth term
   issue wasn’t even that big of a deal, since the precedent had
   already been broken three years before.
3. FDR won because the war was going well, and because people wanted to stick with him.

XV. The Last Days of Hitler

1. On the retreat and losing, Hitler concentrated his forces and threw
   them in the Ardennes forest on December 16, 1944, starting the Battle
   of “the Bulge.” He nearly succeeded in his gamble, but the
   ten-day penetration was finally stopped by the 101st Airborne Division
   that had stood firm at the vital bastion of Bastogne, which was
   commanded by Brigadier General A.C. McAuliffe.
2. In March 1945, the Americans reached the Rhine River of Germany,
   and then pushed toward the river Elbe, and from there, joining Soviet
   troops, they marched toward Berlin.
3. Upon entering Germany, the Allies were horrified to find the
   concentration camps where millions of Jews and other
   “undesirables” had been slaughtered in attempted genocide.
   • Adolph Hitler, knowing that he had lost, committed suicide in his bunker on April 30, 1945.
4. Meanwhile, in America, FDR had died from a massive cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945.
5. May 7, 1945 was the date of the official German surrender, and the
   next day was officially proclaimed V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day).

XVI. Japan Dies Hard

1. American submarines were ruining Japan’s fleet, and attacks
   such as the March 9-10, 1945 firebomb raid on Tokyo that killed over
   83,000 people were wearing Japan out.
2. On October 20, 1944, General MacArthur finally “returned” to the Philippines.
   • However, he didn’t retake Manila until March 1945.
3. The last great naval battle at Leyte Gulf was lost by Japan, terminating its sea power status.
4. In March 1945, Iwo Jima was captured; this 25-day assault left over 4,000 Americans dead.
5. Okinawa was won after fighting from April to June of 1945, and was captured at the cost of 50,000 American lives.
   • Japanese “kamikaze” suicide pilots, for the sake of
     their god-emperor, unleashed the full fury of their terror at Okinawa
     in a last-ditch effort.

XVII. The Atomic Bombs

1. At the Potsdam Conference, the Allies issued an ultimatum: surrender or be destroyed.
2. The first atomic bomb had been tested on July 16, 1945, near
   Alamogordo, New Mexico, and when Japan refused to surrender, Americans
   dropped A-bombs onto Hiroshima (on August 6, 1945), killing 180,000 and
   Nagasaki (on August 9, 1945), killing 80,000.
3. On August 8, 1945, the Soviets declared war on Japan, just as
   promised, and two days later, on August 10, Japan sued for peace on one
   condition: that the Emperor Hirohito be allowed to remain on the
   Japanese throne.
   • Despite the “unconditional surrender” clause, the Allies accepted.
4. The formal end came on September 2, 1945, on the battleship U.S.S. Missouri where Hirohito surrendered to General MacArthur.

XVIII. The Allies Triumphant

1. America suffered 1 million casualties, but the number killed by
   disease and infections was very low thanks to new miracle drugs like
   penicillin. But otherwise the U.S. had suffered little losses (two
   Japanese attacks on California and Oregon that were rather harmless).
2. This was America’s best-fought war, despite the fact that the U.S. began preparing later than usual.
3. The success was partly thanks to the excellent U.S. generals and admirals, and the leaders.
4. Industry also rose to the challenge, putting out a phenomenal
   amount of goods, proving wrong Hermann Goering, a Nazi leader who had
   scorned America’s lack of manufacturing skills.