Chapter 35
America in World War II, 1941–1945
I. The Allies Trade Space for Time
• Time was the most needed munition:
– Expense was no limitation
– America’s problem was to retool itself for all-out war production
• Dictators would not crush their adversaries
• German scientists might find the unbeatable secret weapon.
– America’s task:
• It had to feed, clothe, and arm itself
• It had to transport its forces to regions as far separated as Britain and Burma.
I. The Allies Trade Space for Time (cont.)
– It had to send a vast amount of food and munitions to its hard-pressed allies
• Who stretched all the way from the USSR to Australia.
II. The Shock of War
• National unity was no worry, since the bombing of Pearl Harbor:
• American Communists denounced the Anglo-French “imperialist” war – Clamoring for an unmitigated assault on the Axis powers
• Pro-Hitlerites in the United States melted away
• Millions of Italian Americans and German Americans were loyal supporters of the nation’s war programs
• World War II speeded the assimilation of many ethnic groups into American society
• No government witch-hunting of minority groups.
II. The Shock of War (cont.)
• Painful exception—the plight of 110,000 Japanese Americans, mainly on the Pacific Coast (see pp. 800-801) – Government forcibly herded them together in concentration
camps
• Executive Order No. 9066: – The internment camps deprived these uprooted Americans
of dignity and basic rights
– The internees lost hundreds of millions of dollars in property and forgone earnings
– The Supreme Court 1944 upheld the constitutionality of the Japanese relocation in Korematsu v. U.S.
– In 1988 the U.S. government officially apologized and approved the payment of reparations of $20,000 to each camp survivor.
II. The Shock of War (cont.)
• War prompted changes in the American mood:
– Many New Deal programs were wiped away
– The era of the New Deal was over
– World War II was no idealistic crusade
– U.S. government now put emphasis on action.
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III. Building the War Machine
• American economy snapped to attention: • Massive military orders—over $100 billion in 1942
alone—soaked up the ideal industrial capacity
• War Production Board (WPB): – Halted the manufacture of nonessential items—passenger
cars
– Assigned priorities for transportation and access to raw materials
– Imposed a national speed limit and gasoline rating in order to conserve rubber and built 51 synthetic-rubber plants
– By war’s end they were far outproducing the prewar supply.
III. Building the War Machine (cont.)
• Farmers increased their output
• The armed forces drained the farms of workers
• But heavy new investment in agricultural machinery and improved fertilizers more than made up the difference
• In 1944 and 1945 the farmers hauled in record-breaking billion-bushel wheat harvests.
• Economic strains: • Full employment and scarce consumer goods fueled a
sharp inflationary surge in 1942.
III. Building the War Machine (cont.)
– The Office of Price Administration (OPA):
• Eventually brought ascending prices under control with extensive regulations
• Rationing held down the consumption of critical goods
• Though some “black marketeers” and “meatleggers” cheated the system
– The National War Labor Board (NWLB):
• Imposed ceilings on wage increases
III. Building the War Machine (cont.)
• Labor conditions:
– Labor union membership increased from 10 million to more than 13 million during the war
• They fiercely resented the government-dictated wage ceilings
• A rash of labor walkouts plagued the war efforts
• Prominent among the strikers were the United Mine Workers: – Called off the job by the union chieftain, John L. Lewis.
III. Building the War Machine (cont.)
• The Smith-Connally Anti-Strike Act: June, 1943:
– Authorized the federal government to seize and operate tied-up industries
– Strikes against any government-operated industry were made a criminal offense
– Washington took over the coal mines, and for a brief time, the railroads
– Work stoppages actually accounted for less than one percent of the total working hours of U.S.’ wartime laboring force.
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IV. Manpower and Womanpower
• The armed service enlistments:
– 15 million men in World War II
– 216,000 women, who were employed for noncombat duties
– “Women in arms” were the WACs (Women’s Army Corps), WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) (navy), SPARs (U.S. Coast Guard Women’s Reserve)
– Millions of young men were clothed in “GI” government issue) outfits.
IV. Manpower and Womanpower (cont.)
– Exempted industrial and agricultural workers from the draft
– Still there was a shortage of farms and factory workers
– The Bracero program:
• Mexican agricultural workers, called braceros, came to harvest the fruit and grain crops of the West
• The Bracero program outlived the war by some twenty years, becoming a fixed feature of the agricultural economy in many western states.
IV. Manpower and Womanpower (cont.)
• 6 million women took joys outside their homes:
– Over half had never before worked for wages
– Government was obliged to set up 3,000 day-care centers to care for “Rosie the Riveter’s” children
– At the end of the war many women were not eager to give up the work
– The war foreshadowed an eventual revolution in the roles of women in American society.
IV. Manpower and Womanpower (cont.)
• Many women did not work for wages in the wartime economy, but continued traditional roles
• At war’s end, 2/3 of women war workers left the labor force
• Many were forced out by returning service-men
• Many quit their jobs voluntarily because of family obligations
• There was a widespread rush into suburban domes- ticity and the mothering of the “baby boomers.”
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V. Wartime Migrations
• Demographic changes:
– 15 million men and women decided not to return home again
– War industries sucked people into boomtowns—Los Angeles, Detroit, Seattle, Baton Rouge
– California’s population grew by 2 million
– The south experienced dramatic changes:
• Here were the seeds of the postwar blossoming of the “Sunbelt” (see Map 35.1)
V. Wartime Migrations (cont.)
– Some 1.6 millions blacks left the South for jobs in the war plants of the West and North
– Forever after, race relations constituted a national, not a regional, issue
– Explosive tensions developed over employment, housing, and segregated facilities
• Roosevelt issued an executive order forbidding discrimination in defense industries
• He established the Fair Employment Practices Com-mission (FEPC): – To monitor compliance with his edict.
V. Wartime Migrations (cont.)
– Blacks were drafted into the armed forces:
• Assigned to service branches rather than combat units
• Subjected to petty degradations: – Segregated blood banks for the wounded
• In general the war helped to embolden blacks in their long struggle for equality
• Slogan—“Double V”—victory over the dictators abroad and over racism at home
• Membership in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) shot up to the half-million mark:
V. Wartime Migrations (cont.)
– A new militant organization committed to nonviolent “direct action”, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) 1942.
– The northward migration of African Americans accelerated after the war:
• Thanks to the advent of the mechanical cotton picker
• Introduced in 1944, this machine did the work of 50 people at about 1/8th the cost
• The Cotton South’s historic need for cheap labor dis- appeared
• Some 5 million black tenant farmers and sharecrop- pers headed north in the decades after the war – One of the great migrations in American history.
V. Wartime Migrations (cont.)
– By 1970 half of the blacks lived outside the South
• And urban became almost became a synonym for black
• The war prompted an exodus of Native Americans from the reservation
– Thousands, men and women, found work in the major cities
– Thousands more went into the armed forces
• 90% of Indians resided on reservations in 1940
• 6 decades later ½ lived in cities, more in southern Calif.
V. Wartime Migrations (cont.)
– 25,000 men served in the armed forces
– Served as “code talkers”
• They transmitted radio messages in their native languages, which were incomprehensible to the Germans and Japanese.
• Rubbing together created some violent friction:
– Mexican Americans in Los Angeles were viciously attacked by Anglo sailors
– Brutal race riot killed 25 blacks and 9 whites in Detroit.
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VI. Holding the Home Front
• Americans on the home front suffered little:
– The war invigorated the economy
– Lifted the country out of a decade-long depression
– The gross national product rose from $100 billion in 1940 to more than $200 billion in 1945
– Corporate profits rose from $6 billion in 1940 to almost twice that amount four years later
– Despite wage ceiling, overtime pay fattened pay envelopes.
VI. Holding the Home Front (cont.)
– Prices rose up to 33% in 1948
– The hand of the government touched lives more
• Post-1945 era of big-government interventionism
• Households felt the constraints of the rationing system
• Millions, men/women, worked for the government in the armed forces
• Millions worked in the defense industries
• The Office of Scientific Research and Development channeled hundreds of millions of dollars into univer-sity-based scientific research—establishing partner-ships with the government.
V. Holding the Home Front (cont.)
• Government dollars swept unemployment from the land
• War, not enlightened social policy, cured the depression
• 1941-1945 as the origins of a “warfare-welfare state.”
– The conflict was phenomenally expensive
• War bill amounted to more than $330 billion— – 10 times the direct cost of World War I
– Twice as much as all previous federal spending since 1776
• Roosevelt would have preferred a pay-as-you-go
• The cost was simply too gigantic
V. Holding the Home Front (cont.)
• The income tax net was expanded and the rate rose as high as 90%
• Only two-fifths of the war costs were paid from current revenues
• The remainder was borrowed
• The national debt skyrocketed from $49 billion in 1941 to $259 billion in 1945 (see Figure 35.1).
• When production slipped into high gear, the war was costing about $10 million an hour
• That was the price of victory over such implacable enemies.
VII. The Rising Sun in the Pacific
• Early successes of the efficient Japanese militarists were breathtaking:
– They would have to win quickly or lose slowly
– They expanded into the Far Eastern bastions:
• American outposts of Guam, Wake, the Philippines
• They seized the British-Chinese city port of Hong Kong and British Malaya
• They plunged into the snake-infested jungles of Burma
• They lunged southward against the oil-rich Dutch East Indies
VII. The Rising Sun in the Pacific (cont.)
– Better news came from the Philippines, which succeeded in slowing down the Japanese
– When the Japanese landed, General Douglas MacArthur withdrew to a strong defensive position at Bataan, not far from Manila:
• Here 20,000 American troops, supported by a force of ill-trained Filipinos, held off the Japanese attacks until April 9, 1942
• Before the inevitable American surrender, MacArthur was ordered to depart secretly for Australia
VII. The Rising Sun in the Pacific (cont.)
• His army remnants were treated with vicious cruelty in the infamous eighty-mile Bataan Death March to prisoner-of-war camps: – First in a series of atrocities committed by both sides.
• The island fortress of Corregidor, in Manila harbor, – Held out until May 6, 1942, when it too surrendered
– Which left Japanese forces in complete control of the Philippine archipelago (see Map 35.2).
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VIII. Japan’s High Tide at Midway
– The Japanese continual march:
• Invaded New Guinea, and landed on the Solomon Islands
• Their onrush finally checked by a crucial naval battle fought in the Coral Sea, May 1942
• America, with Australian support, inflicted heavy losses on the victory-flushed Japanese
• First time the fighting was done by carrier-based aircraft
• Japan next undertook to seize Midway Island: – Epochal Battle of Midway, June 3-6, 1942—Admiral Chester
W. Nimitz, fighting done by aircraft and the Japanese broke action after losing four vitally important carriers.
VIII. Japan’s High Tide at Midway (cont.)
• Midway was a pivotal battle:
– Combined with the Battle of the Coral Sea, the U.S. success at Midway halted Japan’s fighting
• They did get America’s islands of Kiska and Attu
• These victories caused fear of an invasion of the United States through Alaska
– Japanese imperialists, overextended in 1942, suffered from “victory disease”
• Their appetites were bigger than their stomachs
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IX. American Leapfrogging Toward Tokyo
• America seized the initiative in the Pacific:
– In 1942 American gained a toehold on Guadalcanal Island
• Japanese troops evacuated the island in February, 1943
• Japan losses were 20,000, compared to 1,700 for the Americans
• American and Australian forces under General Douglas MacArthur held on in New Guinea, the last buffer protecting Australia
• The scales of war began to tip.
IX. American Leapfrogging Toward Tokyo (cont.)
– The U.S. Navy, with marines and army divisions, began “leapfrogging” the Japanese-held islands in the Pacific
• As the American forces drove toward Tokyo, they reduced the fortified Japanese outposts
• Island hopping strategy called for: – Bypassing the most heavily fortified Japanese posts
– Capturing nearby islands
– Setting up airfields on them
– Then neutralizing the enemy bases through heavy bombing
– Deprived of essential supplies from the homeland, Japan’s outpost would slowly wither on the vine—as they did.
IX. American Leapfrogging Toward Tokyo (cont.)
• Brilliant success crowned American attacks on the Japanese island strongholds in the Pacific:
– Islands were being recaptured from the Japanese
– Especially prized were the Marianas, including America’s conquered Guam
• Assault on the Marianas opened June 19, 1944:
• 250 Japanese antiaircraft destroyed, with only a loss of 29 American planes
IX. American Leapfrogging Toward Tokyo (cont.)
• The following day, in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, U.S. naval forces sank several Japanese carriers
• The Japanese navy never recovered
• A mass suicide leap of surviving Japanese soldiers and civilians from “Suicide Cliff,” the major islands of Marianas fell to U.S. attackers in July-August, 1944
• Bombing of Japan began November 1944 (see Map 35.3)
X. The Allied Halting of Hitler
• Hitler entered the war in 1942:
– The tide of subsea battle turned slowly
• The old techniques of warfare were being strengthened by new methods: – Air patrol
– The newly invented technology of radar
– The bombing of submarine bases
• Eventually Allied antisubmarine tactics improved: – British code breakers
• 1945 the Allies had the upper hand against the U-boat.
X. The Allied Halting of Hitler (cont.)
• The turning point of the land-air war against Hitler had come late in 1942:
• British had launched a thousand-plane raid on Cologne in May
• In August they joined the American air force with cascading bombs on German cities
• The Germans under Marshal Erwin Rommel—the “Desert Fox”—drove across North Africa into Egypt
• In October 1942, British general Bernard Montgomery delivered an attack at El Alamein, west of Cairo
• With the aid of American tanks, he speedily drove the enemy back to Tunisia.
X. The Allied Halting of Hitler (cont.)
• In September 1942 the Russians stalled the German steamroller at Stalingrad, graveyard of Hitler’s hopes:
– Scores of invading divisions surrendered
– In November 1942 the Russians unleashed a crushing counteroffensive
– 1943 Stalin had regained about 2/3 of the blood-soaked Soviet motherland from the German invader.
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XI. A Second Front from North Africa to Rome
• Losses: • Soviet—millions of soldiers and civilians lay dead
– Hitler’s armies had overrun most of western USSR
• Anglo-American losses—counted only in the thousands
• By war’s end some 20 millions Soviets had died
– Americans, including FDR, wanted to invade France in 1942 or 1943:
• British military were not enthusiastic about a frontal attack on German-held France.
XI. A Second Front from North Africa to Rome (cont.)
• They preferred to attack Hitler’s Fortress Europe through the “soft underbelly” of the Mediterranean
• The American reluctantly agreed to postpone a massive invasion of Europe
• An assault on French-held North Africa was a compro-mise second front – The highly secret attack in November 1942 was led by
American general Dwight D. (“Ike”) Eisenhower
– With joint Allied operations the invasion was the mightiest waterborne effort up to that time in history
– After savage fighting, the remnants of the German-Italian army were finally trapped in Tunisia and surrendered in May, 1943.
XI. A Second Front from North Africa to Rome (cont.)
• Casablanca:
– Roosevelt met with Churchill in January 1943:
– The Big Two agreed to:
• Step up the Pacific war
• Invade Sicily
• Increase pressure on Italy
• Insist on “unconditional surrender” of the enemy.
– Unconditional surrender was one of the most controversial moves of the war:
• Main criticism—it steeled the enemy to fight to a last bunker resistance
XI. A Second Front from North Africa to Rome (cont.)
• While discouraging antiwar groups in Germany from revolting
• No one can prove that “unconditional surrender” either shortened or lengthened the war
• But what is known: – By helping to destroy the German government utterly, the
harsh policy forced a thorough postwar reconstruction
– The Allied forces, victorious in Africa, now turned against the not-so-soft underbelly in Europe:
• Sicily fell in August 1943
• Mussolini was deposed
XI. A Second Front from North Africa to Rome (cont.)
• Italy surrendered unconditionally in September 1943
• Hitler’s well-trained troops stubbornly resisted the Allied invaders
• The Germans unleashed their fury against the Italians who had declared war on Germany October 1943
• Italy appeared to be a dead end
• Rome was finally taken on June 4, 1944
• The Allies continued to fight into northern Italy
• May 2, 1945, only five days before Germany’s official surrender, several hundred thousand Axis troops in Italy laid down their arms and became prisoners of war.
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XII. D-Day: June 6, 1944
• The Soviets: • Never ceased their clamor for an all-out second front
• Marshall Joseph Stalin balked at leaving Moscow
– Tehran, the capital of Iran (Persia) was finally chosen at the meeting place:
– Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin—November 28-December 1, 1943
– Progressed smoothly
– Most important achievement was agreement on broad plans, especially those for launching Soviet attacks on Germany
• Preparations for the cross-channel invasion of France were gigantic
XII. D-Day: June 6, 1944 (cont.)
– D-Day, June 6, 1944:
• The enormous operation, involved some 4,600 vessels, unwound
• After desperate fighting, the invaders finally broke out of the German iron ring that enclosed the Normandy landing zone
• Spectacular were the lunges across France by American armored divisions under General Patton
• The retreat of the German defenders was hastened when an American-French force landed in August 1944 on the southern coast of France and swept northward
XII. D-Day: June 6, 1944 (cont.)
• With the assistance of the French “underground” Paris was liberated in August 1944.
• Allies forces rolled irresistibly toward Germany
• The first important German city (Aachen) fell to the Americans in October 1944
• And the days of Hitler’s “thousand-year Reich” were numbered (see Map 35.4).
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XIII. FDR: The Fourth-Termite of 1944
• The presidential campaign of 1944:
– Republicans:
• Met in Chicago with hopeful enthusiasm
• They quickly nominated Thomas E. Dewey—mild internationalism
• Nominated for vice president, a strong isolationist, Senator John W. Bricker of Ohio
• Platform called for unstinted prosecution of the war and the creation of a new international organization to maintain peace.
XIII. FDR: the Fourth-Termite of 1944 (cont.)
– Democrats:
• FDR was the “indispensable man”
• He was nominated at Chicago on the first ballot by acclamation
• In a sense he was the “forgotten man” of the convention
• An unusual amount of attention was focused on the vice presidency: – Henry A. Wallace, having served four years as vice
president, desired a renomination
– Conservative Democrats distrusted him as an ill-balanced and unpredictable liberal
XIII. FDR: The Fourth-Termite of 1944 (cont.)
– A “ditch Wallace” move developed tremendous momentum, despite his popularity
– With Roosevelt’s blessing, the vice-presidential nomination went to Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri (the new Missouri Compromise”)
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XIV. Roosevelt Defeats Dewey
• Dewey took the offensive: • Denounced the tired and quarrelsome “old men” in
Washington
• He proclaimed repeatedly that after “twelve long years” of New Dealism, it was “time for a change”
• As for the war: he would not alter the basic strategy but would fight it better—a type of “me-tooism” ridiculed by the Democrats
• The fourth-tem issue did not figure prominently; they did fear fifth and sixth terms by the “lifer” in the White House.
XIV. Roosevelt Defeats Dewey (cont.)
• New political action committee of the CIO:
– Was organized to get around the law banning the direct use of union funds for political purposes
– FDR was opposed by a majority of the newspapers, which were owned chiefly by Republicans
• Results of the election:
– Roosevelt won a sweeping victory
– 432 to 99 in the Electoral College
– 25,606,585 to 22,014,745 in the popular vote.
XIV. Roosevelt Defeats Dewey (cont.)
– Roosevelt won primarily because the war was going well
– Foreign policy was a decisive factor:
• Strength and experience was needed in fashioning a future organization for world peace
• Dewey had spoken smoothly of international cooperation
• His isolationist running mate, Bricker, had implanted serious doubts
• The Republican party was still suffering from the taint of isolationism fastened on it by the Hardingites.
XV. The Last Days of Hitler
• Hitler’s last attempt: – On December 16, 1944, he hurled an attack against the
American lines in the Ardennes Forest
– His objective was the Belgian port of Antwerp, key to the Allied supply operation
– Ten day operation was halted after the 101st Airborne Division had stood firm at the vital bastion of Bastogne
– Brigadier General A. C. McAuliffe defiantly answered the German demand for surrender with one word: “Nuts.”
– Reinforcements were rushed up, and the last-gasp Hitlerian offensive was stemmed in the Battle of the Bulge (Map 35.5).
• In March 1945 forward-driving American troops reached Germany’s Rhine River
XV. The Last Days of Hitler (cont.)
– General Eisenhower’s troops reached the Elbe River in April 1945
» Americans and Soviets clasped hands
» American found blood-spattered and still-stinking con-centration camps where the Nazis had engaged in the scientific mass murder of “undesirables” and an estimated 6 million Jews.
• The American government had long been informed of Hitler’s campaign of genocide against the Jews: – Had been reprehensibly slow to take steps against it
– Roosevelt’s administration had bolted the doors against large numbers of Jewish refugees
– And even refused to bomb the rail lines that carried the victims to the camps
XV. The Last Days of Hitler (cont.)
– The Soviets reached Berlin in April 1945
– Adolf Hitler committed suicide in an underground bunker on April 30, 1945
– President Roosevelt suddenly died at Warm Springs, Georgia, April 12, 1945
– Vice President Truman took the helm
– On May 7, 1945, the German government surrendered unconditionally
– May 8 was officially proclaimed V-E (Victory in Europe) Day.
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XVI. Japan Dies Hard
– American submarines—“the silent service”—were destroying the Japanese merchant marine:
• These “undersea craft” destroyed 1,042 ships – 50% of Japan’s entire life-sustaining merchant fleet
• Giant bomber attacks were more spectacular: – They were reducing the enemy’s cities to cinders
– The massive firebomb raid on Tokyo, March 9-10, 1945, was annihilating
– It destroyed over 250,000 buildings, a quarter of the city, and killed an estimated 83,000 people.
• General MacArthur was on the move: – Completed the conquest of New Guinea, he moved north-
west for the Philippines—600 ships and 250,000 men
XVI. Japan Dies Hard (cont.)
– Landed on ashore at Leyte Island on October 20, 1944
– Japan’s navy made one last effort to destroy MacArthur
– A gigantic clash at Leyte Gulf, fought on the sea, and in the air, was actually three battles (October 23-26, 1944)
• The Americans won all of them – Japan was through as a sea power
– It had lost about 60 ships
– Overrunning Leyte, MacArthur landed on the main Philippine island of Luzon in January 1944
– Manila was his major objective—the ravaged city fell in March
– But the Philippines were not conquered until July
– The American toll was over sixty thousand
XVI. Japan Dies Hard (cont.)
– Japan’s capture:
• Iwo Jima was captured in March 1945 – 25 day assault cost over four thousand American dead
• Okinawa from April to June, 1945 – Sold Okinawa for 50,000 American casualties, while
suffering far heavier losses themselves
– The U.S. Navy, which covered the invasion of Okinawa, sustained severe damage
• Japanese suicide pilots (“kamikazes”) crashed their bomb-laden planes on to the decks of the invading fleet. – All told, the death squads sank over thirty ships and badly
damaged scores more.
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XVII. The Atomic Bombs
• Washington planning an all-out invasion of the main islands of Japan:
• Tokyo had secretly sent out peace feelers to Moscow
• Americans, having broken the secret Japanese radio codes, knew of these feelers
• Bomb-scorched Japan still showed no outward willingness to surrender unconditionally to the Allies
– The Potsdam conference:
• Near Berlin July 1945, sounded the death knell of the Japanese
• Truman met in a 17 day parley with Joseph Stalin and the British leaders
XVII. The Atomic Bomb (cont.)
• The conference issued a strong ultimatum to Japan: – Surrender or be destroyed
– American bombers showered the dire warning to Japan in tens of thousands of leaflets; no encouraging response
– America had a fantastic ace up its sleeve
– Roosevelt persuaded Albert Einstein to push for unlocking the secret of an atomic bomb
– Congress, at Roosevelt’s request, made available $2 billion
• The Manhattan Project pushed feverishly forward: – In the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16,
1945, the experts detonated the first awesome and devas-tating atomic device.
XVI. The Atomic Bomb (cont.)
• With Japan still refusing to surrender, the Potsdam threat was fulfilled
– On August 6, 1945, a lone American bomber dropped one atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan
• About 180,000 people were killed, wounded or missing
• Some 70,000 of them died instantaneously
• 60,000 more soon perished from burns and radiation disease.
– Two days later, August 8, Stalin entered the war against Japan
• XVI. The Atomic Bomb (cont.)
• Soviet armies speedily overran the depleted Japanese defenses in Manchuria and Korea in a six-day “victory parade”: – That involved several thousand Russian casualties
– Japanese, facing atomization, still did not surrender.
• On August 9 American aviators dropped a second one on the city of Nagasaki: – Toll of about 80,000 were killed or missing (see p. 825)
• On August 10, 1945 Tokyo sued for peace on one condition: – That Hirohito, the bespectacled Son of Heaven, be allowed
to remain on his ancestral throne as nominal emperor
– Accepted by the Allies on August 14, 1945.
XVI. The Atomic Bomb (cont.)
• The formal end came, with dramatic force, on September 2, 1945:
– Official surrender was conducted by General MacArthur on the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay
– At the same time, Americans at home hysterically celebrated V-J (Victory in Japan) Day
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XVIII. The Allies Triumphant
• World War II proved to be terribly costly:
– American forces suffered some 1 million casualties
• More than one-third of which were deaths
• Sharply reduced because of the use of blood plasma and “miracle” drugs, notably penicillin
– The Soviet suffered casualties many times greater; more than 25 million people were killed
– The first war that killed more civilians than armed combatants (see pp. 822-823).
XVIII. The Allies Triumphant (cont.)
• Other results:
– America emerged with its mainland virtually unscathed
– A few Japanese fire-bombs had drifted across the Pacific, killing six in Oregon
– Much of the rest of the world was utterly destroyed and destitute
• It was the best fought war in American history: – Unprepared at first , the nation was better prepared than
others
– It was fighting German submarines before Pearl Harbor
– The United States proved itself to be resourceful, tough, adaptable, able to accommodate itself to the tactics of an enemy who was relentless and ruthless.
XVIII. The Allies Triumphant (cont.)
• American leadership proved to be of the highest order:
• Brilliant generals—Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Marshall (chief of staff), admirals Nimitz and Spruance
• Collaboration between Roosevelt and Churchill in planning strategy
• Industrial leaders were skilled, marvels of production were performed daily
• Assembly lines proved as important as battles lines
• Victory went again to the side of the smokestacks
XVIII. The Allied Triumphant (cont.)
– The enemy was almost literally smothered by bayonets, bullets, bazookas, and bombs
• The American way of war was simply more: – More men, more weapons, more machines, more
technology, and more money than any enemy could hope to match
– From 1940-1945 the output of American factories was simply phenomenal
• Americans had given its answer: – Democracy had overthrown and discredited dictators
– Washington exercised a large among of control over the individual during the war emergency
– But the American people preserved their precious liberties without serious impairment.
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