A World in Flames

Chapter 11

WWII

• Would you support or oppose U.S. involvement in a conflict between other countries if it might result in a world war?

America and the World(Chapter 11 Section 1)

• The Rise of Dictators – 2 things contributed– The treaty that ended WWI – & the economic depression

• contributed to the rise of dictatorships in Europe and Asia

– Italy (1919) – Benito Mussolini• Founder of Italy’s Fascist party

– Fascism – kind of aggressive nationalism

• Fascists believed that the nation was more important then the individual

– That a nation became great by expanding its territory and building its military

– Fascists were anti-Communists

• Backed by a militia known as Blackshirts, Mussolini became the premier of Italy and set up a dictatorship

– Bolshevik Party (1917) – Vladimir Lenin• Set up Communist governments throughout the

Russian empire• The Russian territories were renamed the Union of

Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1922• The Communists set up a one-party rule

– Joseph Stalin became the new Soviet dictator in 1926

• 1927 Stalin began a massive effort to industrialize the country

– Millions of peasants who resisted the Communist policies were killed

Vladimir Lenin

Bolshevik Party Flag

USSR Flag in 1922

Joseph Stalin

– Rise of new political parties in Germany• Started after WWI due to political & economic chaos• The Nazi Party was nationalistic & anti-Communist• Adolf Hitler called for the unification of all Germans under

one government– He believed certain Germans were part of a “master race”

destined to rule the world– He wanted Eastern Europeans enslaved– He felt Jews were responsible for many of the world’s problems

• 1933 Hitler was appointed prime minister of Germany– Storm troopers intimidated voters into giving Hitler dictatorial

powers

Nazi Rally at Nurnberg, Germany

Rally at Nurnberg, Germany

Adolf Hitler

Leader of the Nazi Party

– Japan• Difficult economic times in Japan after WWI

undermined the country’s political system– The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923– The world wide depression of 1929

• Many Japanese officers and civilians wanted to seize territory to gain needed resources

• 1931 the Japanese army, without the government’s permission, invaded the resource-rich Chinese province of Manchuria

– The military took control of Japan

The Great Kanto Earthquake

On September 1, 1923, one of the worst earthquakes in world history hit the Kanto plain and destroyed Tokyo, Yokohama and the surroundings. About

140,000 people fell victim to this earthquake and the fires caused by it.

• America Turns to Neutrality– Americans support isolationism

• Due to the following events Americans wanted to avoid international commitments

– Rise of dictatorships in Europe and Asia after WWI– Refusal of European countries to repay war debts owed to

the U.S. due to the Great depression– Nye Committee findings that arms factories made huge

profits

– Congress passed the Neutrality Act of 1935• making it illegal for Americans to sell arms to any

country at war

– Neutrality Act of 1937• continued the ban of selling arms to countries at

war • Required warring countries to buy nonmilitary

supplies from the U.S. on a “cash and carry” basis

– President Franklin D. Roosevelt supported internationalism

• Internationalists believe that trade between nations creates prosperity and helps to prevent war

– Japan aligned itself with Germany and Italy• These three countries became known as the Axis

Powers

– After Japan launched a full-scale attack on China in 1937

• Roosevelt authorized the sale of weapons to China, saying that the Neutrality Act of 1937 did not apply, since neither China nor Japan had actually declared war.

World War II Begins(Chapter 11 Section 2)

• “Peace in our Time”– February 1938, Adolf Hitler threatened to invade

Austria • Unless Austrian Nazis were given important

government posts

– March 1938, Hitler announced the Anschluss, or unification, of Austria and Germany

– Hitler claimed the Sudetenland, an area of Czechoslovakia with a large German-speaking population

• Czechs strongly resisted Germany’s demand for the Sudetenland

– France, the Soviet Union, and Britain threatened to fight Germany if it attacked Czechoslovakia

– Munich Conference on September 29, 1938• Britain and France hoping to prevent another

war, agreed to Hitler’s demands in a policy known as appeasement

– March 1939, Germany sent troops into Czechoslovakia• Bringing the Czech lands under German

control

– Hitler demanded the return of Danzig – Poland’s Baltic Sea port• He also wanted a highway and railroad across

the Polish Corridor• These demands convinced the British and

French that appeasement had failed

– In May 1939, Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland by the German army

– August 23, 1939, Germany and the USSR signed a nonaggression treaty, with a secret agreement to divide Poland

• The War Begins– On September 1, 1939

• Germany and the USSR invaded Poland

– On September 3• Britain and France declared war on Germany

– Starting World War II

– The Germans used a blitzkrieg, lightening war, to attack Poland

• The Polish Army was defeated by October 5

– April 9, 1940• German Army attacked Norway and Denmark• Within a month, Germany overtook both

countries

– After WWI• the French built a line of concrete bunkers

and fortifications called the Maginot Line along the German border

• When Hitler decided to attack France, he went around the Maginot Line

– By invading the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg

• The French and British forces quickly went into Belgium

– Becoming trapped there by German forces

– By June 4, 1940• About 338,000 British and French troops had

evacuated Belgium– Through the French port of Dunkirk and across the

English Channel– Using ships of all sizes

– June 22, 1940• France surrendered to the Germans• Germany installed a puppet government in France

• Britain Remains Defiant– Hitler thought that Britain would negotiate peace

after France surrendered• He did not anticipate the bravery of the British people

and their prime minister, Winston Churchill• June 4th, 1940

– Churchill delivered a defiant speech that rallied the British people and alerted the U.S. to Britain’s plight

Prime Minister of

Britain Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill talks with Alex Henshaw He was one of the great aviation pioneers, air race master, and with a record-breaking trip from the UK to Cape Town and back. Alex was renowned as the chief test pilot for Vickers-Armstrong at the Castle Bromwich aircraft factory, and a master display pilot of the immortal Spitfire.

– To invade Britain• Germany had to defeat the British air force• In the Battle of Britain

– The German air force, the Luftwaffe, launched an all-out air battle to destroy the British Royal Air Force

– After German bombers bombed London» The British responded by bombing Berlin, Germany

– The Royal Air Force was greatly outnumbered by the Luftwaffe

• BUT the British had radar stations and were able to detect incoming German aircraft and direct British fighters to intercept them

The Holocaust(Chapter 11 Section 3)

• Nazi Persecution of the Jews– The Nazis killed nearly 6 million Jews and

millions of other people during the Holocaust• Holocaust – The Hebrew term for the Nazi campaign

to exterminate the Jews before and during WWII in Shoah

– The Nazis persecuted anyone who opposed them

• The Disabled• Gypsies• Homosexuals• And Slovic people• Their strongest hatred was at the Jews

• Picture from the Holocaust Museum

Auschwitz-Birkenau• "Work will set you free."

– In September 1935• The Nuremburg Laws

– took citizenship away from Jewish Germans – Banned marriage between Jews and other Germans

• German Jews were deprived of many rights that citizens of Germany had long held

• The Nuremberg Laws define a "Jew" as someone with three or four Jewish grandparents.

• By 1936 at least half of Germany’s Jews were jobless

• Jews were required to carry identity cards, but the government added special identifying marks to theirs: a red "J" stamped on them and new middle names for all those Jews who did not possess recognizably "Jewish" first names -- "Israel" for males, "Sara" for females. Such cards allowed the police to identify Jews easily.

– Anti-Jewish violence erupted throughout Germany and Austria on November 9th, 1938

• Known as Kristallnacht, or “night of broken glass”– Ninety Jews died– Hundreds badly injured– Thousands of Jewish businesses were destroyed – And over 180 synagogues were wrecked

• Roll call for newly arrived prisoners, mostly Jews arrested during Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass"), at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Buchenwald, Germany, 1938.

– Between 1933 and the beginning of WWII in 1939

• About 350,000 Jews escaped Nazi-controlled Germany

• Many of them emigrated to the U.S.• Millions of Jews remained trapped in Nazi-dominated

Europe because they could not get visas to the U.S. or to other countries

• The Final Solution– On January 20, 1942, Nazi leaders met at the

Wannsee Conference to decide the “final solution” of the Jews and other “undesirables”

• The plan was to round up Jews and other “undesirables” from Nazi-controlled Europe and take them to concentration camps

– Concentration camps were detention centers where healthy individuals worked as slave laborers

– The elderly, the sick, and the young children were sent to extermination camps to be killed in large gas chambers

• Interview

• Woman's Interview

– After WWII began• Nazis built concentration camps throughout Europe• Extermination camps were built in many of the

concentration camps, mostly in Poland• Thousands of people were killed each day at these

camps

– In only a few years, Jewish culture had been virtually obliterated by the Nazis in the lands they conquered

America Enters the War(Chapter 11 section 4)

• FDR Supports England– Two days after Britain and France declared war

against Germany• President Roosevelt declared the U.S. neutral

– The Neutrality Act of 1939 • allowed warring countries to buy weapons from the

U.S. as long as they paid cash and carried the arms away on their own ships

– President Roosevelt used a loophole in the Neutrality Act of 1939

• Sent 50 American destroyers to Britain • in exchange for the right to build American bases

– on British-controlled Newfoundland, Bermuda, and Caribbean Islands

• The Isolationist Debate– After the German invasion of France and the

rescue of Allied forces at Dunkirk• American public opinion changed to favor limited aid

to the Allies

– The America First Committee opposed any American intervention or aid to the Allies

– President Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented third term as president in the election of 1940

• Both Roosevelt and the Republican candidate, Wendall Willkie

– Said they would keep the U.S. neutral but assist the Allied forces

• Roosevelt won by a large margin

• Edging Toward War– President Roosevelt proposed the Lend-Lease

Act• Which stated that the U.S. could lend or lease arms to

any country considered “vital to the defense of the U.S.”

– Congress passed the act by a wide margin

– June 1941, in violation of the Nazi-Soviet Pact• Hitler began a massive invasion of the Soviet Union

– President Roosevelt developed the hemispheric defense zone

• Which declared the entire western half of the Atlantic as part of the Western Hemisphere and therefore neutral

• This allowed Roosevelt to order the U.S. Navy to patrol the western Atlantic Ocean

– And reveal the location of German submarines to the British

– August 1941, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill agreed to the Atlantic Charter

• This agreement committed the two leaders to a postwar world of democracy, nonaggression, free trade, economic development, and freedom of the seas

– After a German U-boat fired on the American destroyer Greer

• Roosevelt ordered American ships to follow a “shoot-on-sight” policy toward German submarines

• Germans torpedoed and sank the American destroyer Reuben James in the North Atlantic

• Japan Attacks the United States– Roosevelt’s primary goal between August 1939

and December 1941 was to help Britain and its allies defeat Germany

• When Britain began moving its warships from Southeast Asia to the Atlantic, Roosevelt introduced policies to discourage the Japanese from attacking the British Empire

– In July 1940, Congress passed the Export Control Act

• Giving Roosevelt the power to restrict the sale of strategic materials to other countries

– Strategic materials – materials important for fighting a war

• Roosevelt immediately blocked the sale of airplane fuel and scrap iron to Japan

– The Japanese signed an alliance with Germany and Italy

– By July 1941, Japanese aircraft posed a direct threat to the British empire

• Roosevelt responded to the threat by freezing all Japanese assets in the U.S. and reducing the amount of oil shipped to Japan

– He also sent General McArthur to the Philippines to build up American defenses there

– The Japanese decided to attack • resource-rich British and Dutch colonies in Southeast

Asia• Seize the Philippines• And attack Pearl Harbor

– Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941

• Sinking or damaging 21 ships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet– Killing 2,403 Americans and injuring hundreds more

• The next day, President Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan

– On December 11th, 1941• Japan’s Allies – Germany and Italy – declared war on

the United States