Chapter Study Outline

  • I. From isolationism to interventionism
    • A. The Good Neighbor Policy
      • 1. Pan-American Conference of 1933
      • 2. Platt Amendment, with its provisions allowing intervention in Cuba, abrogated in 1934
  • II. Foreign Crisis
    • A. In East Asia
      • 1. Japanese increasingly fell under the control of militarists
    • B. In Europe
      • 1. Italy
        • a. Mussolini had wide appeal as the leader of Italy’s post-World War I Fascist movement
        • b. Mussolini seized power in 1922 and wielded full dictatorial power by 1925
      • 2. Germany
        • a. Hitler and National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) party led Germany’s Fascist movement
        • b. Hitler came to power in 1933 and assumed the title of FŸhrer by 1934
    • C. The Expanding Axis
      • 1. Turmoil of 1934–1936
        • a. Japan renounced Five-Power Treaty in 1934
        • b. German occupation of Rhineland in 1935 violates Versailles Treaty
        • c. Italy conquers Ethiopia in 1935
        • d. Spanish Civil War erupts in 1936
      • 2. Spreading war clouds of 1936–1939
        • a. Japan goes to war against China in 1937
        • b. Italy, Germany, and Japan united with Anti-Comintern Pact, creating the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo “Axis“ by 1937
        • c. Germany united with Austria in 1938
        • d. Germany took Czechoslovakian Sudeten territory in 1938 after signing Munich agreement protecting rest of Czechoslovakia
        • e. Germany broke Munich pledge and conquered the rest of Czechoslovakia in 1939
        • f. Italy conquered Albania in 1939
        • g. Germany (in coordination with the Soviet Union) invaded Poland in September 1939
        • h. Britain and France declared war on Germany after invasion of Poland
  • III. American neutrality
    • A. Increasing global turmoil initially strengthened U.S. isolationist sentiment
    • B. Nye committee’s “merchants of death“ reflect the isolationist mood
    • C. Neutrality Act of 1935
      • 1. Forbade sale of arms or munitions to belligerents
      • 2. Weakness of act became apparent when Italy conquered Ethiopia
      • 3. Provisions added to forbid loans to warring nations in 1936
    • D. America and the Spanish Civil War
      • 1. Roosevelt refused to intervene
      • 2. Germany and Italy help Franco’s Fascist forces to victory by 1939
      • 3. Neutrality laws subsequently extended to cover civil wars
    • E. Neutrality Act of 1937
      • 1. Maintained restraints on arms sales and loans
      • 2. Added a cash-and-carry provision that allowed nations at war to carry U.S. goods from U.S. ports on their own ships
      • 3. In Chinese–Japanese confrontation, Roosevelt did not invoke act to ensure China had access to the American munitions trade
        • a. A step away from isolationism
    • F. Panay incident
      • 1. Japan bombed and sank an American gunboat in China in 1937
      • 2. American animosity toward Japan increased
      • 3. Isolationist sentiment still strong but starting to weaken
    • G. United States moves away from neutrality against Germany after the occupation of Czechoslovakia
      • 1. Roosevelt lobbied for public support to oppose the Fascist menace
      • 2. Neutrality Act of 1939 favors Britain and France
      • 3. Americans increasingly supportive of all measures short of war to stop Germany
  • IV. The storm in Europe
    • A. Blitzkrieg (spring 1940)
      • 1. Germany invades Denmark, Belgium, Norway, and the Netherlands
      • 2. France falls to Germany by June
    • B. American defense
      • 1. Military build-up
      • 2. Increased defense budget
      • 3. National Defense Research Committee established to coordinate military research
    • C. Battle of Britain in 1940
      • 1. Britain’s survival ended threat of German invasion
    • D. Increasing American involvement
      • 1. United States gave fifty “overaged“ destroyers to Britain in return for leases on naval and air bases
      • 2. First peacetime conscription enacted in September 1940
      • 3. Continued debate in America between internationalists who supported aiding Britain and isolationists who opposed risking war to help Britain
  • V. The election of 1940
    • A. The candidates
      • 1. Republicans chose Wendell Willkie
      • 2. Democrats chose Roosevelt to run for an unprecedented third term
    • B. The campaigns
      • 1. Roosevelt presented himself as occupied with urgent defense and diplomatic matters, too busy to campaign
      • 2. Willkie ultimately attacked FDR’s foreign policy as risking war, despite having supported Roosevelt’s foreign policies earlier
      • 3. Roosevelt won third term
  • VI. The lend-lease bill, March 1941
    • A. Countries deemed essential to American defense—such as Britain—allowed to receive arms and other equipment, even if they could not pay
    • B. Act bypassed the legal restrictions against extending loans to countries that defaulted on earlier U.S. loans
    • C. Weakening isolationist opposition failed to prevent its passage
  • VII. The war’s spread in Europe
    • A. Italy entered the war in June 1940 but struggled in campaigns against Greece and British-controlled Egypt
    • B. German forces joined the Italians and by 1941 secured victories in Egypt, Greece, as well as Yugoslavia
    • C. Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria also forced into the Axis fold
    • D. Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941
  • VIII. Increased American support for Britain
    • A. Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill sign the Atlantic Charter in August 1941
      • 1. Called for self-determination and freedom of the seas, among other things
    • B. Shooting incidents, some with fatalities, between American and German ships in the North Atlantic increased after September 1941
    • C. U.S. Navy began convoying merchant vessels to Iceland
    • D. Congress repealed key restrictions of Neutrality Acts in November 1941
  • IX. The storm in the Pacific
    • A. Japanese expansion and policies after 1940
      • 1. Signed Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in 1940
      • 2. Nonaggression pact with Russia signed in 1941
    • B. America’s reaction
      • 1. Froze Japanese assets and restricted oil exports to Japan in summer of 1941
      • 2. Organized the armed forces of the Philippines into the U.S. Army in summer 1941
    • C. The Japanese position
      • 1. Japan was dependent on the United States for important supplies, including 80 percent of its fuel
      • 2. Japanese-American negotiations to lift the oil restrictions and asset freeze stalled over U.S. insistence that Japan withdraw from Indochina and China first
      • 3. The American oil embargo triggered plans to invade British and Dutch possessions in Southeast Asia and the Pacific to secure new oil supplies
      • 4. Attacks on U.S. possessions were included in the plans to ensure U.S. Navy could not threaten Japan’s access to its new supplies
    • D. The United States enters World War II
      • 1. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor
      • 2. The same day, Japan attacked the Philippines, Guam, Midway, Hong Kong, and the Malay Peninsula
      • 3. The United States declared war on Japan
      • 4. On December 11, 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States
  • X. America’s early battles
    • A. Setbacks in the Pacific
      • 1. Territories captured by the Japanese in the Pacific
      • 2. Surrender of the Philippines
      • 3. Japanese strategy: push farther into the Pacific
      • 4. American harassment
        • a. Tokyo bombing
    • B. Turning points in the Pacific
      • 1. Battle of the Coral Sea, 1942
        • a. Significant Japanese and American losses
        • b. Japanese threat to Australia ended
      • 2. Battle of Midway, 1942
        • a. American cryptanalysts break Japanese code
        • b. Japan loses its four best aircraft carriers
      • 3. Significance of aircraft carriers
  • XI. Mobilization at home
    • A. Mobilization of the armed forces
    • B. Economic conversion
      • 1. Agencies for mobilization
        • a. War Powers Act
        • b. War Production Board
      • 2. Supplying strategic materials
      • 3. Conservation
        • a. Scrap metal collection
        • b. Rationing
    • C. Financing the war
      • 1. Taxation
        • a. Revenue Act of 1942
        • b. Taxes pay about 45 percent of wartime expenditures
    • D. Impact of the war on the economy
      • 1. Overall scarcity of goods and imposition of economic controls
      • 2. Improved standards of living compared to Depression era
      • 3. Rise in wages
      • 4. Price controls by Office of Price Administration
      • 5. Wages and farm prices not controlled
      • 6. Threat of inflation
      • 7. Seizure of industries threatened by strikes
      • 8. Measures were effective
        • a. Prices rise only 31 percent by the end of the war
        • b. Rise was more than 62 percent during World War I
    • E. Domestic conservatism
      • 1. Republicans make gains in 1942 elections
      • 2. Many New Deal agencies cut or abolished
      • 3. Actions against labor
        • a. Smith-Connally War Labor Disputes Act
        • b. Anti-union state legislation
  • XII. Social effects of the war
    • A. Mobilization and the development of the West and South
      • 1. Population boom
      • 2. Demographic changes
        • a. African American migration to the West
      • 3. Economic growth
    • B. Women
      • 1. Nearly 200,000 women join the armed forces
      • 2. Over 6 million women enter the civilian workforce
      • 3. Changed attitudes toward gender roles
    • C. African Americans
      • 1. Push for equality, face resistance to desegregation
      • 2. Blacks in armed forces—usually in segregated units
      • 3. Blacks in war industries
        • a. Threat of A. Philip Randolph’s march on Washington
        • b. Executive order prohibits discrimination in companies with federal defense contracts
        • c. Revived migration from the South
      • 4. Racial violence
        • a. Detroit race riot
    • D. Mexicans and Mexican Americans
      • 1. Mexican farmworkers and the bracero program
      • 2. Ethnic tensions and violence in Los Angeles
        • a. Zoot-suit riots
    • E. Native Americans
      • 1. Generally strong support for war
      • 2. “Code talkers“
    • F. Japanese Americans
      • 1. Over 112,000 sent to “war relocation camps“
        • a. Internees came from western states
        • b. Japanese Americans seen as a threat because of their ancestry
      • 2. Most Japanese Americans not disloyal
        • a. Victims of war hysteria and racial prejudice
      • 3. Federal compensation to internment survivors in 1983
  • XIII. Allied war strategy in Europe
    • A. Decision to move against Germany first
    • B. Aspects of the joint conduct of the war
      • 1. Roosevelt-Churchill cooperation
        • a. Affirm the Atlantic Charter
      • 2. Strategy
        • a. Americans want to strike directly across the English Channel
        • b. British want to wait and build up forces, invade French North Africa instead
        • c. Soviets need relief in the East
    • C. The North Africa campaign, 1942–1943
      • 1. Eisenhower’s landing
      • 2. Germany defeated there
    • D. Agreements at Casablanca, 1943
      • 1. Cross-Channel invasion further postponed
      • 2. Assault on Sicily and Italy to follow North Africa campaign
      • 3. Increased bombing of Germany
      • 4. Increased supply shipments to Soviet Union and China
      • 5. Agreement to end war only with enemies’ “unconditional surrender“
    • E. The Battle of the Atlantic through May 1943
      • 1. Allied advantages
        • a. Convoys and escorts
        • b. Radar
        • c. Decoding of German messages
    • F. Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944
      • 1. Invasion of Sicily, July 1943
        • a. Sicily falls to Allies by August
      • 2. Italians negotiate their surrender by September 1943
      • 3. Germany pours in reinforcements to fight Allies in Italy
      • 4. The battle for Rome
        • a. Allies finally capture Rome, June 1944
    • G. The strategic bombing of Europe, 1943–1944
      • 1. Anglo-American cooperation
      • 2. Impact
        • a. Widespread damage
        • b. But bombing does not completely devastate German industrial production
        • c. Bombing’s ability to hurt civilian morale is questionable
        • d. Berlin hit very hard
        • e. Allies control the air
    • H. The Tehran meeting, 1943
      • 1. Includes “Big Three“ leaders—Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin
      • 2. Decisions
        • a. Planning for the D-day invasion and the Russian offensive
        • b. Russia promises to enter war against Japan
        • c. Commitment to creation of a postwar international peacekeeping organization (United Nations)
    • I. D-day, 1944
      • 1. Eisenhower in command of Operation Overlord
      • 2. The invasion, June 1944
        • a. Does not go as planned
        • b. Unfavorable weather
        • c. Extremely high Allied casualties
      • 3. German reaction
        • a. Fooled into thinking invasion would occur elsewhere
        • b. Poor defense strategy authorized by Hitler
        • c. Resistance to Hitler increasing among officers
        • d. Allies have Paris by the end of August 1944
        • e. German forces face calamity
      • 4. Slowing momentum of the Allied drive on Germany
        • a. Need for more planning and establishment of supply lines to sustain the drive
  • XIV. Leapfrogging to Tokyo, 1942–1944
    • A. Guadalcanal landing, 1942
      • 1. Japanese had been strengthening their position on Guadalcanal to attack Allied transportation routes
      • 2. First Marine division takes Guadalcanal in August
    • B. Strategic planning
      • 1. MacArthur wants to target Japanese positions in northern New Guinea
        • a. Puts U.S. forces in position to move on Philippines, then Tokyo
      • 2. Nimitz wants to sweep through Pacific islands of the central Pacific
        • a. Heading toward Formosa (Taiwan) and China
      • 3. Combined Chiefs of Staff agree to pursue both plans
      • 4. Battle of the Bismarck Sea, March 1943
        • a. Significant Japanese losses
      • 5. Japanese naval commander Yamamoto killed in April 1943
    • C. Nimitz in the central Pacific
      • 1. Advance targets Makin and Tarawa (in the Gilbert Islands), November 1943
      • 2. Saipan (in the Marianas), June 1944
      • 3. The Battle of Leyte Gulf, October 1944
        • a. Largest naval engagement in history
        • b. Part of effort to reclaim the Philippines from Japanese control
        • c. Japanese defeated, lose their ability to defend the Philippines
  • XV. The election of 1944
    • A. U.S. climate more politically conservative
    • B. Republicans nominate Thomas E. Dewey, governor of New York
    • C. Democrats name Truman for vice president who replaced the liberal incumbent Vice President Henry Wallace on the ticket
    • D. Victory for Roosevelt
  • XVI. Converging military fronts
    • A. German counteroffensive
      • 1. Battle of the Bulge, December 1944
      • 2. Airpower critical in effort to push German troops back
    • B. Allied moves against Germany
      • 1. Occur against rising tensions among the Allies (the United States and Britain against the Soviet Union)
      • 2. Allies reach the banks of the Rhine, March 1945
      • 3. After reaching the Rhine, encircle the Ruhr Valley
      • 4. Soviets push west through Warsaw in January 1945, reach Vienna by April 1945
  • XVII. The Yalta Conference, 1945
    • A. Convened to discuss the end of the war, the shape of the postwar world
    • B. Roosevelt’s goals
      • 1. Ensure that Soviet Union join the war against Japan
      • 2. United States must join postwar international security organization
      • 3. Allies must preserve a united front against the German aggressors after the war
    • C. Agree to divide occupation of Germany and Berlin among victorious Allied powers
    • D. Soviet Union in position to dominate Eastern Europe
      • 1. Soviet army occupies the region
      • 2. Many of those countries lack strong democratic traditions
      • 3. Russia wants a buffer zone between it and Germany
    • E. Yalta’s legacy
      • 1. Soviet violations of the agreements
      • 2. Secret agreements concerning the Far East
        • a. Soviet control over Outer Mongolia
        • b. Return of Kuril Islands and other rights and territory lost in Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905
        • c. Necessary to ensure Soviets entered the war against Japan
  • XVIII. Collapse of Nazi Germany, 1945
    • A. Roosevelt dies just before the defeat of Germany
    • B. Collapse of Germany
      • 1. Mussolini and Hitler dead
      • 2. Unconditional surrender
    • C. Full extent of the Nazi Holocaust exposed
  • XIX. A grinding war against Japan
    • A. Allied moves toward an invasion of Japan
      • 1. The Philippines
      • 2. Iwo Jima
      • 3. Okinawa
    • B. The atomic bomb
      • 1. Development of the bomb: the Manhattan Project
        • a. Two bombs available for use on Japan by mid-1945
      • 2. Dropping the atomic bombs, August 1945
        • a. Targets chosen among cities not already devastated by firebombing
        • b. Potsdam Declaration threatens bombing if Japan does not surrender immediately
        • c. Military considerations pertaining to fighting Japan and desire to avoid invasion paramount in dropping of first bomb on Hiroshima
        • d. Concerns over Soviet entry into Pacific war significant in the dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki
      • 3. Devastation of the bomb
        • a. Had been underestimated by scientists
        • b. At Hiroshima: 78,000 dead at initial bombing with four square miles of the city destroyed and 70,000 buildings destroyed
        • c. Hiroshima death toll increases to 140,000 by the end of 1945, due to effects of radiation burns and infection
      • 4. Japanese surrender
  • XX. The final ledger
    • A. Estimates of death and destruction
      • 1. Between 50 and 60 million total military and civilian dead
      • 2. Soviet Union suffered greatest losses of all
    • B. Impact on America and the Soviet Union
      • 1. Depression ends in the United States
      • 2. Dramatic expansion of U.S. federal government and presidential authority
      • 3. United States emerges from war with global, political, and military responsibilities and interests
      • 4. United States emerges as the strongest nation on earth in economic and military terms
      • 5. Despites its losses, Soviet Union emerges from the war with new territory and enhanced influence
        • a. Soviets become the strongest power in Europe and Asia