World at War

America and World War II

World War II in American Memory

World War II as morality play
Promoted by Churchill Unity of English-speaking peoples against evil

World War II as standard

Determining factor in U.S. foreign policy for next 50 years

Two Theatres, Two Wars

European Pacific

Prelude: China, 1931

Rise of Japanese Fascism Invasion of China, 1931 Full-scale war, 1937
Rape of Nanking

Italian Fascism

Hitlers Germany
Rise to Power, 19241933
The rise of a Nazi conscience Love Germany above all else and love your ethnic comrade as thyself

Mormonism in Germany: Cautious adjustment

The common good takes precedence over the individual good President Rees in official Nazi newspaper Hein Huebner

The German Jew

19th-century Vienna
Hitler and Herzl Zionism/Nazism

Hitler in Power
1933-1939
Nuremberg Laws, 1935
No citizenship for Jews No employment for Jews

1938: Kristlanacht
Massive attack on Jews throughout Germany: synagogues ransacked, executions ordered

Invasions
1. Austria (?)
Austrian coup paves way for Nazis to absorb Austrian government

2. Czechoslovakia
Sudetenland Germans Right of selfdetermination

The Ghost of the Munich Pact

Hitler asks to absorb Sudeten Germans British, French, Americans agree
Why? The different faces of appeasement
1. To buy time (Maurice Hankey, secretary of cabinet) 2. To avoid rearmament, cut spending (Chamberlain

Hitler invades
Angered, Hitler still takes over Czechoslovokia
Saw Munich as failure

Chamberlain, West embarrassed and issue condemnation of invasion

First strike: Poland

Molotov-Von Ribbentrop sign nonaggression pact in August, 1939 Gleiwitz Incident Germany and Soviets invade Poland, September 1939 Blitzkrieg

Why Poland, Sudetenland, etc.?

Anschluss Following WWI, far eastern Germany had been given to Poland
The Polish corridor

The Treaty of Saint Germain

Locked Germans into foreign Czechoslovokia

Timeline
Summer 1940: Hitler Invades Denmark, Norway, and France
Breaks through Maginot Line

June 1941: Hitler invades Soviet Union

For raw material, more Anschluss

American Neutrality
Neutrality Acts
Series of laws passed between 1935 and 1938 forbidding the sale of arms to countries at war

Nye Committee
Reinforced ideas about corruption of war manufacturers

America enters the war

Lend-Lease

The Greer Incident The Pseudo-War

At dawn they slept

Lead-up to Pearl Harbor
Japanese actions
Withdraws from the League of Nations Invades northern/southern Indochina Invades northern Manchuria

American reactions
Oil embargo, July 1941

Japanese Leadership
Prime Minister Hideki Tojo Emperor Hirohito Admiral Yamamoto Minoru Genda

Luring vs. frontal attack

Leapfrogging
Admiral Chester Nimitz
Commanded northbound force Gilbert, Marshall, and Marinara

General Douglas MacArthur

Commanded southbound force Solomons, New Guinea, and Bismark Archipelago

War in the Pacific

Battle of Midway
First decisive American victory, Jun

Battle of Guadalcanal
Meant as air base, Three land battles, five naval battles, daily air assaults Result: Japanese leave, position U.S. to take the offensive

Battle of Iwo Jima

Positioned U.S. for attack on mainland

Opening the Second Front

Americas African campaign

D-Day

Wartime Conferences
Tehran
Operation Overlord Partition of Poland

Yalta
Division of Germany Stalin agrees to a democratic Poland, to fight Japan after German defeat

Potsdam
Recognition of eastern bloc countries Where Truman mentions to Stalin that United States had powerful, new weapon

Dropping the Bomb

Battle of Okinawa, Summer 1945 Operation: Downfall
August 6th: Hiroshima August 9th: Soviets declare war August 10th: Nagasaki

Homefront
Axis Sally

Lord Hawhaw

Tokyo Rose
American citizen Refused to renounce American citizenship under pressure from Japan Made broadcasts during Zero Hour related to American activities in Pacific

Japanese Internment Camps

Captain John DeWitt Executive Order 9066 Supreme Court Decision
Korematsu v. United States Compulsory exclusion allowable during times of emergency and peril