16: A People's War?

Question 1

True or False: When a resolution was introduced in the senate in 1934 asking senate and president to express “surprise and pain” at what the Germans were doing to the Jews and ask restoration of Jewish rights, the state department “caused this resolution to be buried in committee”

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Did the U.S. provide aid to Spain when a fascist rebellion took place in 1936?

Answer 2

No

Question 3

True or False: Hitler’s attacks on the Jews brought the US into WWII

Answer 3

False

Question 4

Which event caused America to join WWII?

Answer 4

Attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941

Question 5

Which measures di the US take against Japan in summer 1941 which led to the attack on PH?

Answer 5

Total embargo on scrap iron and oil

Question 6

The records show that a White House conference two weeks before Pearl Harbor __________ a war and discussed how it should be _________”

Answer 6

Anticipated; justified

Question 7

Despite the Atlantic charter released by FDR and Churchill claiming to support self-government and anti-colonialism, the Americans assured the French of this

Answer 7

That they would be allowed to keep their empire after the war

Question 8

Executive order 9066, signed by Roosevelt in 1942, gave the army what powers?

Answer 8

To arrest every Japanese-American on the West Coast (110,000) and bring them out of their homes to concentrations camps

Question 9

True or False: US communists organized severe opposition to WWII

Answer 9

False, they supported it mostly

Question 10

What did the Smith Act of 1940 do?

Answer 10

Made the Espionage Act apply in peacetime

Question 11

Where was the climax of British and American bombing which killed 100,000?

Answer 11

Dresden

Question 12

What excuse was given for the atomic bombings of Japan?

Answer 12

To prevent a deadlier invasion and end the war quickly

Question 13

Why was America in a rush to end the war with Japan before August 8th?

Answer 13

They wanted Japan to surrender to them before the Russians joined the fight so that they could occupy post-war Japan

Question 14

What does the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey say about the reasons Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen?

Answer 14

They were chosen as targets “because of their concentration of activities and population”

Question 15

Charles E. Wilson, president of General Electric during the war, suggested a “permanent ___ economy”

Answer 15

War

Question 16

The Truman doctrine began with this

Answer 16

A 1947 speech in which he asked for $400 million in military and economic aid for Greece and Turkey, saying that he US must help “free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures” (this was denouncing the left-wing rebellion in Greece fighting against a right-wing dictatorship)

Question 17

When the North Koreans invaded South Korea, the U.S. asked this body’s members to help repel the armed attack

Answer 17

U.N.

Question 18

How many Koreans died in the Korean War?

Answer 18

2,000,000

Question 19

Despite claiming to be fighting for the restoration of peace, the U.S. pushed into North Korea and brought this country into the war

Answer 19

China

Question 20

Between the launch of Truman’s security program in March 1947 (executive order 9835) and December 1952, 6.6 million persons were investigated for disloyalty/espionage. How many cases of espionage were uncovered?

Answer 20

0

Question 21

What made it easier for the US to drum up anti-communist sentiment after WWII?

Answer 21

Multiple communist victories (Czechoslovakia, China, blockading Berlin, first Atom bomb)

Question 22

What, besides communist victories, worried the US after WWII (global politcs)

Answer 22

Anti-colonial rebellions (Indochina, Indonesia, Philippines)

Question 23

Indochina, China, Korea, and the Philippines were what type of communist movements?

Answer 23

Local, not Russian aggressions (anti-imperialist wave)

Question 24

The Committee or the Negro in the arts, the League of American writers were on this list, in which membership to one of the groups on the list could be used to determine “disloyalty”

Answer 24

List of totalitarian, fascist, communist or subversive organizations

Question 25

Who was Julius Rosenberg (bonus: who was Morton Sobell)

Answer 25

A man sentenced to the electric chair for sending Atom bomb parts schematics to the Soviets based on shady testimony from 2 men who were themselves indicted and in dire straits (bonus: man sentenced for 30 years as co-conspirator for allegedly bringing Julius a film cannister)

Question 26

Truman’s Justice Department prosecuted the leaders of this party successfully in the early 50s, driving the rest of the party underground

Answer 26

The communist party

Question 27

During what decade did the US military budget start to balloon?

Answer 27

1950s

Question 28

Which 1948 plan gave $16 billion dollars to European countries over 4 years

Answer 28

The Marshall Plan

Question 29

What did Truman’s Secretary of state say about the Marshall Plan?

Answer 29

That the policy of relief and reconstruction was chiefly installed as “a matter of national self-interest”

Question 30

What did the US do in Guatemala in 1954?

Answer 30

Overthrew a legally elected government with an invasion force of CIA trained mercenaries and American fighter planes, putting into power Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas

Question 31

The Guatemalan government of 1954 is described by Zinn as what?

Answer 31

The most democratic they ever had, left-of-center socialist, but not communist

Question 32

What decision by Jacobo Arbenz (Guatemala) was most unsettling to the US?

Answer 32

Expropriated 234,000 acres of land owned by United Fruit

Question 33

What did President Kennedy say 4 days before the Bay of Pigs invasion

Answer 33

That the US armed forces would not intervene in Cuba (technically true, but the sentiment was a complete lie)

Question 34

New York Times’ columnist James Reston described JFK as what political leaning?

Answer 34

Centrist, having moved from the left, encouraging job creation, low wage demands to compete in global markets, and soft on civil right ambitions, refusing to outlaw discrimination in government-insured housing