Exam 3

Question 1

. Political and social radicalism after World War I

Answer 1

The 10 years between 1919 and the onset of the Great Depression at the end of 1929 encompassed a period of unprecedented economic prosperity and cultural experimentation as well as political conservatism and religious fundamentalism. Women were allowed to vote but beer and liquor were outlawed. Innovations such as national radio networks, talking motion pictures, mass ownership of automobiles, the emergence of national chain stores, popularity of spectator sports, and the rise of mass marketing and advertising transformed American into the world’s leading consumer society. The culture of mass consumption fueled the explosive growth of middle-class urban life. The 1920 census revealed that for the first time more Americans lived in cities rather than in rural areas. In the political arena reactionaries and rebels battled for control of post-war society roiling in conflict. The fight between Woodrow Wilson and the Republican-led Senate over the Versailles Treaty, coupled with the administration’s crackdown on dissenters and socialist, had weakened an already fragmented and disillusioned progressive movement. Amos Pinchot said President Wilson “put his enemies in office and his friends in jail.” By 1920 many alienated progressives had grown skeptical of any politician claiming to be a reformer or an idealist. Jane Addams said that the 1920’s were “a period of political and social sag.”

Question 2

. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti

Answer 2

The most celebrated criminal case of the 1920s seemed to prove the connection between immigrants and radicalism. It involved 2 working class Italian immigrants who described themselves as revolutionary anarchists: Nicola Sacco and fish peddler Bartolomeo Vanzetti. On May 5, 1920, they were arrested outside Boston, Mass, for stealing $16K from a shoe factory and killing the paymaster and a guard. Both were armed when arrested, both lied to police about their activities, and both were identified by eyewitnesses. The stolen money was never found. The Sacco and Vanzetti case occurred at the height of Italian immigration to the US and against the backdrop of numerous terror attacks by anarchists. The criminal case became a huge public spectacle. The judge who presided over the 1921 trial was openly prejudicial, referring to the defendants as “anarchist bastards”. Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted and ordered executed. The appeals lasted seven years. People claimed that Sacco and Vanzetti were sentenced for their political ideas and ethnic origin rather than for any crime they committed. They were executed on August 23, 1927. After thanking the warden for his kindness, Vanzetti said, “I wish to forgive some people for what they are now doing to me.”

Question 3

The 1924 immigration law

Answer 3

Concerns about foreign radicals invading the US generated new efforts to restrict immigration. Congress passed the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921, which restricted European arrivals each year to 3% of the total number of each nationality represented in the 1910 census. The Immigration Act of 1924 reduced the number to 2% based on the 1890 census, which included fewer of the “new” immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. This law set a permanent limitation, which became effective in 1929, of slightly over 150K new arrivals per year based on the “national origins” of the US populations as of 1920. The purpose of the new quotas was to tilt the balance in favor of immigrants from northern and western Europe who were assigned 85% of the total. The law completely excluded people from East Asia—an insult to the Japanese, who were already kept out of the US by their Gentlemen’s Agreement with Theodore Roosevelt. On the other hand, the Immigration Act of 1924 left the gate open to new arrivals from countries in the Western Hemisphere, so that an ironic consequence of the new law was a substantial increase in the Hispanic Catholic population of the US. Legal arrivals from Mexico peaked at 89K in 1924.

Question 4

The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s

Answer 4

During the postwar years nativist prejudice against “foreigners” took on a new form: a revived, nationwide Ku Klux Klan modeled on the white vigilante group founded to oppose Reconstruction in the post-Civil war South. The new Klan was devoted to “100% Americanism” and restricted its membership to militant white Protestants born in the US. It was determined to protect its warped notion of the American way of life not only from African Americans but also from Roam Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. The 20th century Klan’s founder, William J. Simmons warned “It is a garbage can! When the hordes of aliens walk to the ballot box and their votes outnumber yours, then that alien horde has got you by the throat.” The revived Klan’s appeal to bigotry extended well beyond the states of the former Confederacy. It thrived in small towns and cities in the North and especially in the Midwest, with major strongholds in Oregon and on Long Island, NY. The Klan was a vicious reaction to shifting moral standards and social status, the declining influence of churches, and the broad-mindedness of city dwellers and college students. The new Klan attracted “respectable” member of communities. The South “swarmed with little businessmen, the rural clergy belonged to it or had traffic with it en masse. The Klan was “anti-Negro, anti-alien, anti-red, anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-Darwin, anti-Modern, anti-Liberal, Fundamentalist, vastly Moral, militantly Protestant.” In the mid-1920s the Klan’s peak membership may have been as high as 4 million, but its influence evaporated after passage of the punitive 1924 immigration law.

Question 5

The Scopes trial

Answer 5

In 1925, Tennessee state legislature passed a bill outlawing the teaching of evolution (Darwinism) in public schools and colleges. In Dayton, TN, citizens persuaded a 24 year old high school teacher and part-time football coach, John T. Scopes, to accept an offer from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to defend a test case against the state’s new “anti-evolution” law. The 12 day “Monkey trial” opened on July 10, 1925. William Jennings Bryan offered his services to the prosecution. And Chicagoan Clarence Darrow the nation’s most famous trial lawyer volunteered his services to the ACLU attorneys defending John T. Scopes. Bryan told the media that the trial was not about Scopes but about a state’s right to determine what was taught in the public schools. He said that the “contest between evolution and Christianity is a duel to the death”. Darrow was determined to prove “that America is founded on liberty and not on narrow, mean, intolerable and brainless prejudice of soulless religio-maniacs.” Darrow called Bryan to testify as a hostile “expert” witness on biblical interpretation on July 20. Bryan repeatedly trapped himself in literal-minded interpretations (Jonah was swallowed by a whale, Joshua made the sun stand still, the earth was created in 6 days) and revealed his ignorance of biblical history and scholarship. Bryan gradually conceded that he had never thought through the possibility that many of the Bible’s stories conflicted with common sense and basic scientific truths. Darrow claimed victory. His goal was to “show the country what an ignoramus Bryan was.” The next day the trial ended, the judge ruled that the only issue before the jury was whether Scopes had taught evolution, and no one had denied that he had. He was found guilty, but the TN Supreme Court, while upholding the state’s ant-evolution statute, overruled the $100 fine on a technicality. Both sides were justified in claiming victory. Bryan died 5 days later. During the next 2 years, MS, TX and mostly other southern states followed the lead of TN in passing laws barring the teaching of evolution. The Scopes trial did not end the uncivil war between evolutionists and fundamentalists.

Question 6

. The prohibition amendment

Answer 6

around 1900, the nation’s leading temperance organizations, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Anti-Saloon League had launched a campaign for a national prohibition law. By the 1910’s the Anti-Saloon League had become one of the most effective pressure groups in history, mobilizing Protestant churches behind its single-minded battle to elect “dry” candidates to local, state, and national offices. At its Jubilee Convention in 1913, the league endorsed a prohibition amendment to the Constitution. The 1916 elections produced enough members in both houses of Congress to pass legislation outlawing alcohol. The wartime spirit of sacrifice, the need to use grain for food rather than booze, and wartime hostility to German-American brewers transformed the cause of prohibition into a virtual test of patriotism. On December 18, 1917, the wartime Congress sent to the states the 18th Amendment, which on January 16, 1920, one year after ratification, banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors. Prohibition was the most ambitious social reform ever attempted in the US. The amendment motivated millions of people to use ingenious (and illegal) ways to satisfy their thirst for alcohol. The Volstead Act (1919) which outlined the actual rules and regulations triggered by the 18th amendment had so many loopholes that it virtually guaranteed failure. People stock-piled, farmers were allowed to “persevere” fruit through fermenting them, so-called medicinal liquor was also still allowed. An even greater weakness of the Prohibition law was that Congress never supplied adequate funding to enforce it. The republican presidents during the 20s didn’t embrace the “fanaticism” over temperance. Warren Harding said he was unable to see this as a great moral issue.

Question 7

. Al Capone

Answer 7

the most celebrated Prohibition-era gangster was “Scarface” Al Capone. Born in NYC in 1899 and was connected to 2 murders before he reached 20 years old. He left for Chicago in 1920. He had control of the huge illegal liquor business in the city. In 1927 his Chicago-based bootlegging, prostitution, and gambling empire brought him an income of $60 million. FBI agent Eliot Ness began to smash his bootlegging operations in 1929, but they were unable to pin anything on Capone until a Treasury agent infiltrated his gang and uncovered evidence that nailed him for federal tax evasion. Tried in 1931, Capone was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Question 8

Flappers

Answer 8

in 1919 women’s skirts were typically six inches above the ground; by 1927 there were at the knee, and the “flapper” was providing a shocking model of the new feminism. The name derived from the way fashionable young women allowed their unbuckled galoshes to “flap” around their ankles. other than their fashion sense, flappers were felt to represent a new women taking advantage of their newly won rights – adventurous, smoking, drinking, swearing, partying with men, less protected than the womanly ideal of previous times.

Question 9

The Great Migration

Answer 9

the most significant development in African American life during the early 20th century was the Great Migration northward from the South. The movement of blacks to the North began in 1915-1916, when rapidly expanding war industries and restrictions on immigration together created a labor shortage; legal restrictions on migration continued the movement in the 20s. Altogether between 1910 and 1920 the Southeast lost some 323K African Americans, or 5% of the native black population, and by 1930 it had lost another 615K or 8% of the black population of 1920. With the migration a slow and steady growth in black political influence in northern cities set in. Blacks were freer to speak and act in a northern setting. They also gained political leverage by settling in large cities in states with many electoral votes.

Question 10

The Harlem Renaissance

Answer 10

Along with political activity came a spirit of protest, a spirit that received cultural expression in what came to be called the Harlem Renaissance, the nation’s first self-conscious black literary and artistic movement. The Harlem Renaissance grew out of the fast-growing black community in NYC. The “great dark city” of Harlem, in poet Langston Hughes’s phrase, contained more blacks per square mile than any other community in the nation. The dense concentration of urban blacks generated a sense of common identity, growing power, and cultural self-expression.

Question 11

Marcus Garvey

Answer 11

in 1916, Garvey brought to the all-black Harlem neighborhood in NYC the headquarters of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which he started in his native Jamaica 2 years before. “Garveyism” was the spirit of jazz and the “New Negro” finding expression in what came to be called Negro nationalism, which exalted blackness, black cultural expression and black separatism. He thought racial oppression and exploitation were prevalent in most societies around the world. Garvey insisted that blacks had nothing in common with whites. He called for the cultivation of black racial pride and promoted racial separation rather than integration. He was the 1st major black leader to champion what later came to be called “black power”. The UNIA became the largest black political organization in the 20th century. Garvey declared that the only lasting hope for blacks living in the US was to fell American and build their own republic in Africa. Garvey and his aides created their own black version of Christianity, organized their own fraternal lodges and community cultural centers, started their own black businesses, and published their own newspaper. WEB Du Bois labeled Garvey “the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race. He is either a lunatic or a traitor.” In May 1923 when he and several associates were put on trial for fraud related to the sale of stock in one of his struggling for-profit enterprises, the Black Star Line, a steamship corporation intended to transport blacks to Africa. The jury acquitted everyone but Garvey. The judge sentenced him to the max five-year prison term. In 1927 President Calvin Coolidge pardoned Garvey and deported him to Jamaica.

Question 12

. Jazz music

Answer 12

F. Scott Fitzgerald fastened upon the “Jazz Age” as a label for the broad spirit of rebellion and spontaneity he saw welling up among young Americans during the 20s. The new jazz music had first emerged in New Orleans as an ingenious synthesis of black rural folk traditions and urban dance entertainment. During the 20s it spread to Kansas City, Memphis, the Harlem area of NYC, and Chicago’s South Side. They syncopated rhythms of jazz were popular among rebellious young adults, both black and white, and helped create carefree new dance such as the Charleston and the Black Bottom. Through jazz, black performers not only shaped American culture during the 20s but also European taste as well.

Question 13

Emphasis of the NAACP

Answer 13

the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded in 1910 by white progressives and black activists. The NAACP embraced the progressive idea that the solution to social problems begins with education, by informing the people of social ills. Du Bois became the new organization’s director of publicity and research and editor of its journal, Crisis. The NAACP’s main strategy focused on legal action to bring the 14th and 15th Amendments back to life.

Question 14

Albert Einstein

Answer 14

a young Jewish Austrian refugee from Nazism and German physicist with an irreverent attitude toward established truths, announced his theory of relativity, which maintained that space, time, and mass were not absolutes but instead were relative to the location and motion of the observer. Einstein noted, that mass and energy were not separate phenomena but interchangeable. By 1921, when Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize, his abstract concept of relativity had been international recognized and popularized. Theoretical physics. Light was made up of particles, later called photons. He alerted Roosevelt in the fall of 1939 that the Germans were trying to create atomic bombs, leading the president to take action.

Question 15

The culture of modernism

Answer 15

The dramatic changes in society and the economy during the 20s were accompanied by continuing transformations in science and the arts that spurred to onset of a “modernist” sensibility. Modernists came to believe that the 20th century marked a watershed in human development. Notions of reality and human nature were called into question by sophisticated scientific discoveries and radical new forms of artistic expression. Virginia Woolf declared, “On or about December 1910, human character changed.” Science and social thought, the “uncertainty principle” of Werner Heisenberg had profound philosophical and cultural implication It posed a direct challenge to conventional notions of objectivity by declaring that observation is necessarily subjective and therefor biased and imprecise. The “uncertainty principle” constituted the most revolutionary scientific theory I n150 years, for it meant that there is no such thing as absolute truth. Art and Literature, Modernism is a slippery term, hard to grasp and even harder to define. At once a mood and a movement, full of contradictions, modernism asserted the sovereignty of art and the artist over other elements of society. At base, however, modernism trumpeted an unsettling premise: reality was no longer what it seemed. Imagination and creativity rather than observation and reproduction. The subconscious regions of the psyche are more interesting and more potent than the traditional focus on reason, common sense, and logic. It arose out of a widespread recognition that Western civilization had entered an era of bewildering change and disorienting upheavals. New technology, new modes of transportation and communication, and new scientific discoveries such as quantum mechanics, relativity theory, and Freudian psychology combined to rupture traditional perceptions of reality, herald new way of understand human behavior and consciousness, and generate new forms of artistic expression. Impressionism, futurism, Dadaism, surrealism. “The lost generation.”

Question 16

. Warren G. Harding and the 1920 campaign for president

Answer 16

republican, “return to normalcy” reflected both his own conservative values and the voters’ desire for stability and order. He said it was time to end Wilsonian progressivism; “America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate.” The son of an Ohio farmer, drank bootleg liquor in the midst of the prohibition, had numerous affairs and several children with women other than his wife. Voters saw him as a handsome, charming, loveable politician. He said “I cannot hope to be one of the great presidents, but perhaps I may be remembered as one of the best loved.” Ran against James Cox (democrat for president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt for VP.) In 1920 Americans were “tired of issues, sick at heart of ideals, and weary of being noble.” He won the election 16 million votes to Cox’s 9 million. A return to normalcy involved a nostalgic view of the past – small town, protestant good old days with out radicalism and labor strife, a return to old time values.

Question 17

The Ohio gang

Answer 17

a group of Harding’s drinking buddies who met in a house on K Street near the White House to help the president relieve the pressures of his high office. They set about dismantling or neutralizing many of the social and economic components of progressivism.

Question 18

Andrew Mellon

Answer 18

Secretary of the Treasury reduced government spending and lowered taxes. He persuaded Congress to pass the landmark Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, which created a new Bureau of the Budget to streamline the process of preparing an annual federal budget to be presented for approval by the Congress. The bill also created a General Accounting Office to audit spending by federal agencies. This act realized a long-held desire of progressives to bring greater efficiency and nonpartisanship to the budget preparation process. Mellon also initiated a series of general tax reductions from the wartime levels. Mellon insisted that the reductions should go mainly to the rich, on the “trickle down” principle that wealth in the hands of the few would spur economic growth through increased capital investment.

Question 19

Warren G. Harding and progressivism

Answer 19

he reversed the Wilson administration’s segregationist policy of excluding African Americans from federal government jobs. He also spoke out against the vigilante racism that had flared up across the country during and after the war. In his first speech to a joint session of Congress in 1921, Harding insisted that he nation must deal with the festering “race question.” He attacked the KKK for fomenting “hatred and prejudice and violence,” and he urged Congress “to wipe the stain of barbaric lynching form the banners of a free and orderly, representative democracy.” The Senate failed to pass the bill.

Question 20

The Kellogg-Briand Treaty

Answer 20

aka “The Pact of Paris”, the seductive notion of simply abolishing war culminated in the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. This unique treaty started with an initiative by the French foreign minister Aristide Briand, who in 1927 proposed to Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg that the two countries agree never go to war against each other. This proposal was actually a clever ploy to draw the US into the French security system by the back door. In any future war such a pact would inhibit the US from seeking reprisals in response to any French intrusions on neutral rights. Kellogg turned the tables on Briand. He countered with a plan to have all nations sign the pact. Briand agreed. The Pact of Paris signed on August 27, 1928, declared that the signatories ‘renounce war as an instrument of national policy’. 62 nations signed the pact, but all reserved the right of ‘self-defense’ as an escape hatch. The US Senate ratified the agreement by a vote of 85 to 1. One senator said “this worthless, but perfectly harmless peace treaty would confuse the minds of many good people who think that peace may be secured by polite professions of neighborly and brotherly love.’

Question 21

The Teapot Dome Scandal

Answer 21

Like the Watergate break-in fifty years later, Teapot Dome became the catchphrase for the climate of corruption surrounding the Harding administration. The Teapot Dome was a government-owned oil field in Wyoming. It had been set aside as an oil reserve for ensuring fuel for warships. Harding decided to move administrative control of Teapot Dome from the Department of Navy to the Department of Interior. Thereafter, his secretary of interior, Albert B. Fall, a former Republican senator from New Mexico, began signing sweetheart contracts with close friends who were executives of petroleum companies that wanted access to the oil field. Fall had taken bribes of about $400K (which came in a little black bag) from an oil tycoon. Fall was convicted of conspiracy and bribery and sentenced to a year in prison. Fall was the first former cabinet official to serve time as a result of misconduct in office. Harding said he could take care of his enemies, but his friends were the one’s “keep me walking the floors at night.”

Question 22

Teapot Dome Scandal (2nd question)

Answer 22

see #21

Question 23

The stock market crash

Answer 23

Instead of speculating in real estate, one could buy stock “on margin”—that is, make a small down payment (the “margin”) and borrow the rest from a broker, who held the stock as security in case the stock price plummeted. By 1927, residential construction and automobile sales were slowing and the rate of consumer spending had also slowed. By mid-1929, production, employment, and other measures of economic activity were declining. Still the stock market rose. By 1929, the stock market had become a fantasy world, driven more by hope and greed than by actual business performance. On October 22 a leading bank president assured reporters that there was “nothing fundamentally wrong with the stock market or with the underlying business and credit structure.” The next day, stock values tumbled and triggered a wild scramble as panicking people tried to unload stocks. On Tuesday, October 29, the most devastating day in stock market history to that point, widespread panic set in. The stock market crash did not cause the Great Depression, but it did shake public confidence in the nation’s financial system and it revealed major structural flaws in the economy and in government policies. Too many businesses had maintained high retail prices and taken large profits while holding down wage increases. As a result, about a third of personal income went to only the top 5% of the population. By plowing most profits back into expansion rather than wage increases, the business sector brought on a growing imbalance between rising industrial productivity and declining consumer purchasing power. As consumer spending declined, the rate of investment in new factories and businesses also plummeted. For a time the erosion of consumer purchasing power was concealed by an increase in installment buying, and the volume of foreign loans and investments, which supported foreign demand for American goods, concealed the deflationary effects of the high tariffs. But the flow of American capital abroad began to dry up when the stock market began to look more attractive. Swollen corporate profits, together with Treasury Secretary Mellon’s business-friendly tax policies, enticed the rich into more frenzied stock market speculation. Government policies also contributed to the financial debacle, Andrew Mellon’s tax reductions led to over-saving by the general public, which helped diminish the demand for consumer goods. Hostility toward labor unions impeded efforts to ensure the wage levels kept pace with corporate profits. High tariffs discouraged foreign trade. Lax enforcement of ant-trust laws also encouraged high retail prices. Another culprit was the gold standard, where by nations pegged the value of their paper currency to the size of their gold reserves so as to avoid hyperinflation. When economic output, prices, and savings began dropping in 1929, policy makers, certain that they had to keep their currencies tied to the gold supply at all costs, tightened access to money at the very moment that economies needed an expanding money supply to keep growing. The only way to restore economic stability within the constraints of the gold standard was to let prices and wages continue to fall, allowing the downturn, in Andrew Mellon’s words, to “purge toe rottenness out of the system.” Instead, the lack of innovative engagement among government and financial leaders turned a recession into the world’s worst depression as nations followed Mellon’s contractionist philosophy.

Question 24

Unemployment in early 1933

Answer 24

By 1933, 13 million people were out of work. Millions more who kept their jobs saw their hours and wages reduced. The contraction of the economy especially squeezed debtors, especially farmers and laborers who had made installment purchases or mortgages. By 1933, 1000 Americans per day were losing their homes to foreclosure. The home construction industry went dormant. Factories shut down, banks closed, farms went bankrupt, and millions of people found themselves not only jobless but also homeless and penniless. Hoover blankets—newspaper homeless people wrapped themselves in. Some died of exposure, some suicide. Americans had never before and have never since experienced social distress on such a scale.

Question 25

Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression

Answer 25

set firm limits on government action and was unwilling to set aside that philosophy even to meet a national emergency. He believed the fundamental business structure was sound and the people needed their confidence restored. He invited business, financial, and labor leaders to the White House and urged them to keep their mills and shops open, maintain wage rates, and spread out the work to avoid layoffs, in short, to let the first shock of depression fall on corporate profits rather than on wage earners. In return, union leaders, agreed to refrain from demanding higher wages and going on strike. Hoover exhorted people to keep up hope and reassured business leaders that the economy would rebound. He described the economic downturn not as a “panic” or a “crisis” but as a “depression”, by 1931 he was calling the economic calamity “a great depression” He accelerated the start of government constructions projects in order to provide jobs, but cutbacks by state and local governments in their projects offset the new federal spending. The Federal Reserve Board returned to an easier monetary policy, and Congress passed a modest tax reduction to put more cash into people’s pockets. The Federal Farm Board stepped up its loans and its purchases of farm surpluses, only to face bumper crops in the 30s despite droughts in the Midwest and Southwest. He shared the assumptions that the nation was simply experiencing a short-term shock, not a prolonged malaise so drastic action was not warranted. A “Hooverville” was a shantytown; and Hover flag was an empty pocket turned inside out. Liquidity: banks needed cash to meet the demands of panicky depositors who wanted to cash in their saving accounts. By the end of 1931 over 600 US banks had gone bankrupt. Almost 25% of the workforce—15 million people—were unemployed. . Hoover, although a Progressive, was shackled by traditional economic ideology – balanced budgets, the gold standard, high tariffs would eventually return prosperity. Although he used the federal government on a larger basis than ever before, he still held back, thinking that private charity and local governments should take care of those being hurt the most by the Depression. He felt relief provided by the Federal government would destroy the individual’s self -reliance and self -esteem. Andrew Mellon said we had to wait it out and in the long run everything would be okay. Harry Hopkins agreed, but said in the short term, people have to have something to eat. To me that sums up the difference between Hoover and Roosevelt. It is easy to wait out hard times when you are a multi-millionaire. It becomes less easy when you are unemployed and hungry.

Question 26

Herbert Hoover response to the Bonus Army marchers

Answer 26

Fears of organized revolt arose when unemployed veterans converged on the nation’s capital in the spring of 1932. The “Bonus Expeditionary Force” purpose was to get immediate payment of the cash bonus to nearly 4 million WWI bets that Congress had approved in 1924. The House passed a bonus bill, but when the Senate voted it down, most veterans went home. The rest, along with their wives and children, camped in vacant federal buildings and in a shantytown at Anacostia Flats, within sight of the Capitol. Eager to disperse the homeless veterans, Hoover persuaded Congress to pay for their tickets home. Late in July, the administration ordered the government buildings cleared. A policeman panicked, fired into the crowd, and killed two vets. The Secretary of WAR dispatched about 700 soldiers under overeager General Douglas MacArthur, who was aided by junior officers Dwight D. Eisenhower and George S. Patton. MacArthur, who dismissed the veterans as “communists,” ordered his soldiers to use horses, tanks, tear gas, and bayonets to rout the unarmed vets and their families and burn their makeshift camp.

Question 27

The Reconstruction Finance Corporation

Answer 27

in 1932 the new Congress set up the Reconstruction Finance Corporation with $500 million (and the authority to borrow $2 billion more) for emergency loans to struggling banks, life-insurance companies, and railroads. Under Charles G. Dawes, Calvin Coolidge’s VP, the RFC authorized $1.2 billion in loans within 6 months. It staved off several bankruptcies, but Hoover’s critics called it favoritism to big businesses, the most damaging instance of which was a $90 million loan to Dawes’s own Chicago bank, made soon after he left the RFC in 1932.

Question 28

The Bonus Expeditionary Force

Answer 28

see #26

Question 29

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s disability

Answer 29

in 1921, at age 39, his career was cut short by the onset of polio that left him permanently disabled, unable to stand or walk without braces. The battle for recovery transformed the young aristocrat. He became less arrogant, less superficial, more focused, and more interesting.

Question 30

. “Happy Days Are Here Again”

Answer 30

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democratic nominee for president in 1932 was upbeat and communicated joy, energy, and hope. His campaign song was “Happy Days Are Here Again.” I believe more than anything else, FDR’s confidence and good cheer, in contrast to Hoover’s dour demeanor did more to raise confidence than most actions of the New Deal. People just felt better about things because FDR was confident and he was doing something about the Depression.

Question 31

Percentage of Americans unemployed in 1932

Answer 31

One out of every four Americans in 1932 was unemployed; in many large cities nearly half of the adults were out of work.

Question 32

Franklin D. Roosevelt and banking

Answer 32

by taking their money out of banks depositors unwittingly exacerbated the Depression. On his second day in office, Roosevelt called upon Congress to meet in a special session on March 9 to pass the Emergency Banking Relief Act, which permitted sound banks to reopen and appointed mangers for those that remained in trouble. The banks in 28 states were closed and those open in the other states were experiencing “runs” on the bank, panic withdrawals from depositors. The emergency banking act closed all banks for 4 days while teams of examiners checked the books. Sound banks were opened with clean bills of health, shaky banks were given loans by the Federal Reserve, and unsound banks did not reopen. It ended the bank runs as people began to deposit their money again. Further confidence was restored when in a subsequent banking act, deposits were insured by a government agency. This is one of the real success stories of the New Deal.

Question 33

The “fireside chats”

Answer 33

On March 12, in the first of his radio-broadcast “fireside chats”, the president assured the 60 million Americans listening that it was safer to keep your money in a reopened bank than under the mattress.: The following day, deposits in reopened banks exceeded withdrawals. The key thing to remember is that FDR was the first president to master the use of the radio to communicate with the American people. He did some 90 addresses over his 12 years in office and used radio as a way to reach a mass audience. He spoke in a conversational manner as if he were sitting in their living rooms. They sounded conversational, but they were anything but off the cuff.

Question 34

Civilian Conservation Corps

Answer 34

to provide jobs to unemployed, unmarried young men aged 18-25. Nearly 3 million men were hired to work at a variety of CCC jobs in national forests, parks, and recreational areas and on soil-conservation projects. CCC workers built roads, bridges, campgrounds, and fish hatcheries, planted trees, taught farmers how to control soil erosion and fought fires. The enrollees could also earn high-school diplomas.

Question 35

Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933

Answer 35

created a new federal agency, the Agricultural Adjustment Administrations (AAA), which sought to raise prices for crops and herds by paying farmers to reduce production. The money for such payments came from a tax levied on the processors of certain basic commodities—cotton gins, and flour mills. By the time Congress acted the spring growing season was already under way. The prospect of another bumper cotton crop forced the AAA to sponsor a plow-under program. To destroy a growing crop was a shocking commentary on our civilization. By the end of 1934, Wallace could report declines in Wheat, cotton, and corn production and a simultaneous increase in commodity process. Farm income increased by 58% between 1932-1935. The AAA was only partially responsible for the gains. It achieved successes in boosting the overall farm economy. Conservatives castigated its sweeping powers. On January 6, 1936, in United States V. Butler, the Supreme Court declared the AAA’s tax on food processors unconstitutional. The administration devised a new plan in the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act, which it pushed through Congress in 6 weeks.

Question 36

The Grapes of Wrath

Answer 36

a devastating drought that settled over the plains states between 1932-1935 played a major role in reducing production and creating the epic “dust bowl” migrations. John Steinbeck’s famous novel, The Grapes of Wrath (1939) was about many migrant families that had been driven off the land by AAA benefit programs that encouraged large farmers to take land worked by tenants and sharecroppers out of cultivation.

Question 37

The National Recovery Administration (NRA)

Answer 37

headed by Hugh S. Johnson, a chain-smoking retired army general. Its purpose was twofold: (1) to stabilize the economy by reducing chaotic competition through the implementation of industry-wide codes that set wages and prices and (2) to generate more purchasing power for consumers by providing jobs, defining workplace standards, and raising wages. In each major industry, committees representing management, labor, and government drew up the fair practices codes. The labor standards featured in every code set a 40 hour workweek, minimum weekly wages of $13 ($12 in the South) and prohibited the employment of children under the age of 16. To gain union support, the NRA included a provision (Section 7a) that guaranteed the right of workers to organize unions. But while prohibiting employers from interfering with union-organizing efforts, the NRA did not create adequate enforcement measures, nor did it require employers to bargain in good faith with labor representatives. For a time the NRA worked and the downward spiral of wages and prices subsided. But as soon as economic recovery began, business owners complained that the larger corporations dominated the code-making activities and that price-fixing robbed small producers of the chance to compete. And because the NRA wage codes excluded agricultural and domestic workers, 3 out of every 4 employed blacks derived no direct benefit from the program. The enduring mark it left was a 40 hour workweek, minimum wage, and the abolition of child labor. The NRA’s endorsement of collective bargaining spurred the growth of unions. The codes advanced trends toward stabilization and rationalization that were becoming the standard practice of business at large and despite misgivings about the concentration of power, would be further promoted by trade associations.

Question 38

Tennessee Valley Authority

Answer 38

one of the most innovative New Deal programs was the creations of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a bold venture designed to bring electrical power, flood control, and jobs to one of the poorest regions in the nation. In May 1933, Congress created the TVA as a multipurpose public corporation serving 7 states: Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, and TN. By 1936, it had 6 dams completed or under way and a master plan to build 9 high dams on the TN River, which would create the “Great Lakes of the South.” It opened the rivers to boast and barges, fostered soil conservation and forestry, experimented with fertilizers, drew new industries to the region, encouraged the formation of labor unions, improved schools and libraries, and sent cheap electric power pulsating through the valley for the first time. It also meant the destruction of homes, farms, and communities. Inexpensive electricity became the TVA’s reason for being, most importantly during WWII. The TVA transported farm families from the age of kerosene to the age of electricity.

Question 39

The dust bowl

Answer 39

in the southern plains of the Midwest and the Mississippi Valley, a decade-long drought during the 1930s spawned an environmental and human catastrophe known as the dust bowl. Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, and Oklahoma were the states hardest hit. Crops withered and income plummeted. Relentless winds swept across the treeless plains, scooping up millions of tons of parched topsoil into billowing dark clouds that floated east across entire states, engulfing farms and towns in what were called black blizzards. By 1938, over 25 million acres of prairie land had lost most of its topsoil. Farmers could not pay mortgages, and banks foreclosed on their property. Suicide soared. Millions of people abandoned their farms. Uprooted farmers and their families formed a migratory stream of hardship flowing westward from the South and the Midwest toward California. . During WWI, the gov. guaranteed a price of $2 per bushel for wheat and it cost $.49 to produce. Farmers plowed under grassland on the Great Plains and planted wheat. This continued into the 1920’s as mechanization helped increase production. Prices began falling as Europe’s farming returned to normal, and as the price of wheat fell, the answer was to grow more. Native grasses which had evolved to live on the Plains were destroyed so that when the drought hit, there was nothing to hold the top soil, and the ever present winds blew it in large clouds call dust storms. People fled the land as Okies to go to California to become migrant workers – The Grapes of Wrath story.

Question 40

“Okies” and “Arkies”

Answer 40

frequently lumped together as “Okies” and “Arkies”, most of the dust bowl refugees were from cotton belt communities in Arkansas, Texas, and Missouri, as well as Oklahoma. During the 30s and 40s some 800K people let those four states and headed to the Far West. Many were white-collar workers and retailer whose jobs had been tied to the health of the agriculture sector. Most were white people. Some traveled on trains or buses, others hopped a freight train or hitched a ride; most rode in their own cars. The trip took four to five days on average.

Question 41

Eleanor Roosevelt

Answer 41

was an outspoken activist for women, blacks, and youth. She was the first woman to address a national political convention, to write a nationally syndicated column, and to hold regular press conferences. She crisscrossed the nation, representing the president and the New Deal, defying local segregations ordinances to meet with black leaders, supporting women’s causes and organized labor, highlighting the plight of unemployed youth, and imploring people to live up to their egalitarian ideals. The first activist first lady. She acted as FDR’s eyes and ears, and was a constant scold, attempting to push him on social issues, particularly civil rights. He needed southern votes in Congress, so he resisted.

Question 42

Huey Long’s program to end the Depression

Answer 42

a “populist plan” for dealing with the Great Depression called the “Share-the-Wealth” society. Long proposed to confiscate large personal fortunes so as to guarantee every poor family a cash grant of $5K and every worker an annual income of $2,500, provide pensions to the aged, reduce working hours, pay veterans’ bonuses, and ensure a college education for every qualified student. It didn’t matter to him that his projected budgets failed to add up or that his program offered little to stimulate an economic recovery. “Maybe somebody says I don’t understand it. Well, you don’t have to. Just shut your damn eyes and believe it. That’s all.” He claimed by 1935, thee were 27K Share-the-Wealth clubs scattered across the nation with 8 million supporters. FDR said the two most dangerous men in the US were Douglas McArthur and Huey Long. It was felt that as a 3rd party candidate, Long could cost FDR and election victory in 1936, but he was killed before he could attempt it. Long’s slogan was “Every man a king!”

Question 43

Francis Townsend

Answer 43

outraged by the sight of elderly women raking through garbage cans for scraps of food, Townsend called for government pensions for the aged. In 1934 he began promoting the Townsend Recovery Plan, which would pay $200/month to every citizen over 60 who retired from employment and promised to spend the money within the month. The plan had the lure of providing financial security for the aged and stimulating economic growth by freeing up jobs for younger people. Critics noted that the cost of his program, which would serve 9% of the population, would be more than half the national income. Yet Townsend was indifferent to details and balanced budgets.

Question 44

The Social Security Act

Answer 44

the hardships of the Great Depression revived the idea of a social security program that Roosevelt masterfully guided the legislation through Congress. Designed by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, it included 3 major provisions. Its centerpiece was a self-financed pension fund for retired people over the age of 65 and their survivors. In 1937, workers and employers contributed payroll taxed to establish the fund. Roosevelt stressed that the pension program was not intended to guarantee a comfortable retirement. It was designed to supplement other sources of income and protect the elderly from some of the hazards and vicissitudes of life. Only later did voters and politicians come to view Social Security as the primary source of retirement income for most the aged. It also set up a shared federal-state unemployment-insurance program, financed by a payroll tax on employers. In addition, the new legislation committed the national government to a broad range of social-welfare activities based upon the assumption that “unemployables” were people who were unable to work and would remain a state responsibility while the national government would provide work relief for the able-bodied. To that end the law inaugurated federal grants-in-aid for three state-administered public-assistance programs—old-age assistance, aid to dependent children, and aid for the blind—and further aid for maternal, child-welfare, and public health services. When compared with similar programs in Europe, the Social Security system was conservative. It was the only government pension program in the world financed by taxed on the earnings of workers, most other countries funded such programs out of general revenues. It was also a regressive tax: it entailed a single fixed rate for all, regardless of income level. It thus pinched the poor more than the rich. It also impeded Roosevelt’s efforts to revive the economy because it removed from circulation a significant amount of money. The Social Security tax took money out of workers’ pockets and placed it into a retirement trust fund, exacerbating the shrinking money supply that was one of the main causes of the Depression. In addition, the Social Security system initially excluded 9.5 million workers who most needed the new program: farm laborers, domestic workers, and the self-employed, mostly black.

Question 45

FDR and expansion of the Supreme Court

Answer 45

By the end of its 1936 term, the Supreme Court had ruled against New Deal programs in 7 out of the 9 majors cases it reviewed. Suits challenging the constitutionality of the Social Security and Wagner acts were pending. Given the conservative tenor of the Court, the Second New Deal seemed in danger of being nullified, just as much of the original New Deal had been. For that reason, FDR devised an ill-conceived and impolitic plan to change the Court’s conservative stance by enlarging it. Congress, not the Constitution, determines the size of the Supreme Court, which at different times has had 6,7,8,9, and 10 justices. In 1937, the number was 9. On February 5, 1937, FDR sent his controversial plan to Congress, without having consulted congressional leaders. He wanted to create up to 6 new Supreme Court justices. But the “Court-packing” maneuver, as opponents tagged the president’s scheme, backfired. It was too contrived, too brazen, and too political. His plan angered Republicans, but it also ran into a deep-rooted public veneration of the courts and aroused fears among Democrats that a future president might use the precedent for different purposes. A sequence of Court decisions during the spring of 1937 reversed previous judgments in order to uphold disputed provisions of the Wagner and Social Security acts. In addition, a conservative justice resigned, and FDR named to the vacancy one of the most consisted New Dealers, Senator Hugo Black for Alabama. But FDR insisted on forcing his Court-packing bill through the Congress. On July 22, 1937, the Senate voted it down. It was the biggest political blunder of FRD’s career. He later claimed he had lost the battle but won the war. The Court had reversed itself on important New Deal legislation, and the president was able to appoint justices in harmony with the New Deal. The court packing plan helped bring Republicans back to Congress, and they formed a coalition with conservative Democrats that blocked all New Deal proposals. FDR threw away the political capital of his overwhelming victory in 1936 on the court packing plan, a feat not duplicated until Johnson did it with Vietnam and Nixon did it with Watergate

Question 46

Battle of Midway

Answer 46

in the spring of 1942, US forces finally halted the Japanese advance toward Australia in two key naval battles. The Battle of the Coral Sea (5/7-8, 1942) stopped a Japanese fleet convoying troops toward New Guinea. Less than a month after the Coral Sea engagement, Admiral Yamamoto steered his armada for Midway, the westernmost of Hawaii’s inhabited islands, from which he hoped to render Pearl Harbor helpless. This time it was the Japanese that were victims of surprise. Working night and day deciphering some 50K 5-digit numerical groups, American cryptanalysts (“code breakers”) had broken the Japanese military communications code. This breakthrough reshaped the balance of power in the Pacific war. Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander of the US central Pacific fleet, now learned from intercepted Japanese messages where Yamamoto’s fleet was heading. He reinforced the American base at tiny Midway Island with planes and aircraft carriers. The first Japanese foray against Midway, on June 4, 1942, severely damaged the island’s defenses, but at the cost of about 1/3 of the Japanese planes. American bombers struck back. In the strategic Battle of Midway, US planes sank 3 aircraft carriers and badly damaged a 4th that was later sunk by a torpedo; it was the first defeat for the Japanese navy in 350 years and the turning point of the Pacific war. It blunted Japan’s military momentum, eliminated the threat to Hawaii, demonstrated that aircraft carriers, not battleships, were the decisive elements of modern naval warfare, and bought time for the US to mobilize its massive industrial productivity for a wider war. The Japanese felt the US would have to defend Midway and expose what was left of the Pacific Fleet. US navy code breakers, in a remarkable feet, determined Midway was the target so that Nimitz was able to move American carriers to a position of ambush, and the enemy lost 4 carriers to our one. In addition, Japan lost most of her battle experienced pilots. Japan was unable to replace the crews and the carriers, while dozens of carriers were under construction in the US and thousands of pilots were being trained for combat. What were they thinking?

Question 47

African American soldiers during World War II.

Answer 47

the most volatile social issue ignited by the war was AA participation in the military. In 1941 the armed forces were the most racially polarized institution in the nation. About 1 million AA’s, men and women, served in the armed forces during the war, but in racially segregated units. Black soldiers and sailors were initially excluded from combat units and relegated to menial tasks. Black officers could not command white soldiers or sailors. Henry L. Stimson said “leadership is not embedded in the negro race.” Among the most famous AA servicemen were some 600 pilots trained at Tuskegee, Alabama. The Tuskegee Airmen ended up flying more that 15K missions during the war. Their excellence spurred the military and civilian leaders to integrate the armed forces after the war.

Question 48

The British and Americans strategy during World War II

Answer 48

among the combatant nations, the Soviets, by far, bore the brunt of the war against the Nazis, leading Joseph Stalin the Soviet premier, to insist that the Americans and British relieve the pressure on them by attacking the Germans in western Europe. Roosevelt and Churchill agreed that they needed to create a second front, but they could not agree on the location of their first attack against Hitler’s armies. Because Roosevelt was concerned about the upcoming Congressional elections, he told the US military planners to accept Churchill’s compromise proposal for a joint Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa, which had been captured by German and Italian armies. See #51 for more information on the North African Campaign.

Question 49

Japanese internment during WWII

Answer 49

the attack on Pearl Harbor ignited vengeful anger toward people of Japanese descent living in the US, known as Nisei. The US government sponsored the worst violation of civil liberties during the 20th century when more than 112K Nisei were forcibly removed from their homes on the West Coast and transported to “war relocation camps” in the interior. President Roosevelt initiated the removal of Japanese Americans he called Japs, when he issued Executive Order 9066 of February 19, 1942. More than 60% of the internees were US citizens; 1/3 of which were under the age of 19. Forced to sell their farms and businesses at great losses, the internees lost not only their property but also their liberty. Few, if any, were disloyal but all were victims of fear and racial prejudice.

Question 50

War relocation camps

Answer 50

see #49

Question 51

The Casablanca Conference

Answer 51

Five months before German and Italian forces surrendered to American and British forces in North Africa, Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff met at Casablanca, the largest city in Morocco. Stalin, who was not at the meeting, continued to press for a second front in western Europe to relieve the pressure on the Soviet Union. Roosevelt and Churchill spent 8 days hammering out key strategic decisions. The British convinced the Americans that they should follow up a victory in North Africa with an assault on German and Italian forces on the Italian island of Sicily and in Italy itself. Roosevelt and Churchill also decided to step up the bombing of Germany and to increase shipments of military supplies to the Soviet Union and the Nationalist Chinese forces fighting the Japanese. American military-industrial productivity proved to be the most strategic asset in the war. Many of the Soviet troops who would advance west toward Berlin during the latter phase of the war rode in American trucks, ate American rations, and wore American boots. Yet, Stalin complained the Americans were far more generous with supplies than they were committing large numbers of soldiers on the battlefield. Before leaving Casablanca, Roosevelt announced that the war would end only with the “unconditional surrender” of all enemies. This decision was designed to quiet Soviet suspicions that the Western Allies might negotiate separately with the various enemy nations making up the Axis. The announcement also reflected Roosevelt’s determination that “every person in Germany should realize that this time Germany is a defeated nation.” The dictum probably had little effect; neither the Italian nor the Japanese surrender would be unconditional. But the decision did have one unexpected result: it opened an avenue for eventual Soviet control of eastern Europe because it require Russian armies to pursue Hitler’s forces all the way to Germany. And as they liberated the nations of eastern Europe from Nazi control, the Soviets created new Communist governments under their own control.

Question 52

“D-day”

Answer 52

June 6, 1944. In early 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower took command of the Allied forces. He planned “Operation Overlord”, the daring assault on Hitler’s “Atlantic Wall,” a formidable series of fortifications and mines along the French coastline. Operation Overlord succeeded largely because it was meticulously planned and because it surprised the Germans. The Allies fooled the Nazis into believing that the invasion would come at Pas-de-Calais, on the French-Belgian border, where the English Channel was narrowest. Instead, the landing occurred in Normandy, almost 200 miles south. Operation Overlord was the greatest amphibious invasion in the annals of warfare, but it was small compared with the offensive launched by the Russians a few weeks after D-day. Still, the Normandy invasion was a turning point in the war—and a pivotal point in America’s rise to global power.

Question 53

The Yalta Conference of 1945

Answer 53

(February 4-11, 1945) hosted by the Soviets. Two aims loomed large in Roosevelt’s thinking at Yalta. One was the need to ensure that the Soviet Union would join the ongoing war against Japan. The other was based on the lessons he had drawn from the First World War. Chief among the mistakes to be remedied this time were the failure of the US to join the League of Nations and the failure of the Allies to maintain a united front against Germany after the war. Roosevelt was determined to replace the outdated isolationism of the 1920’s and 1930s with an engaged internationalism. Churchill focused on restoring on independent, democratic France and Poland and limiting efforts by the victors to extract punitive reparations on defeated Germany, lest Europe recreate the problems caused by the Versailles Treaty ending WWI. Stalin’s goals were defensive and imperialistic: he wanted to retrieve former Russian territory given to Poland after WWI and to impose Soviet control over the newly liberated countries of Eastern Europe. Roosevelt called for a conference to create a new world security organization, which he termed the United Nations. The next topic was how a defeated Germany would be governed. The war map dictated the basic pattern of occupation zones: the Soviets would control eastern Germany, and the Americans and British would control the rich industrial areas of the west. Berlin, the German capital isolated within the Soviet zone, would be subject to joint occupation. With respect to eastern Europe, Poland became the main focus of Allied concern at Yalta. Britain and France had gone to war in 1939 to defend Poland, and now, six years later, the course of the war had left Poland’s fate in the hands of the Soviets. Having suffered almost 30 million deaths during the war, the Soviets were determined to dictate the postwar situation in eastern Europe. At Yalta the Big Three promised to sponsor free elections, democratic governments, and constitutional safeguards of freedom throughout liberated Europe. The Yalta Declaration of Liberated Europe reaffirmed the principles of the Atlantic Charter, but in the end it made little difference. The Yalta Accords only postponed Soviet takeovers in eastern Europe for a few years. Critics, mostly Republicans, later attacked Roosevelt for “giving” Eastern Europe over to the Soviet domination at Yalta. But the course of the war shaped the actions at Yalta, not Roosevelt’s diplomacy. Perhaps the most bitterly criticized of the Yalta accords was a secret agreement about the Far East. As the Big Three met at Yalta, fighting still raged against the Japanese in Asia. Military analysts estimated that Japan could hold out for 18 months after the defeat of Germany. FDR, eager to gain Soviet participation in the war against Japan accepted Stalin’s demands on postwar arrangements in the Far East.

Question 54

The Axis defeat and Germany’s surrender

Answer 54

a month after FRD’s death on April 12, 1945, Hitler’s Nazi empire collapsed. The Allied armies met advance detachments of Soviet soldiers on April 25. Three days later Italian partisans killed Mussolini as he tried to flee. In Berlin, which was under siege by the Soviets, Hitler married his mistress, Eva Braun, in an underground bunker then killed her and himself. On May 2, Berlin fell to the Soviets. On May 7, in the Allied headquarters at Reims, France, the chief of staff of the German armed forces signed a treaty agreeing to an unconditional surrender. Nazi domination of Europe ended a little more than 12 years after the monomaniacal Hitler had come to power.

Question 55

Germany and the Holocaust

Answer 55

people from all over Europe had been captured and put to work in labor camps, concentration camps, or death camps. Most shocking was the extent of the Holocaust, scarcely believable until the Allied armies liberated the Nazi death camps in eastern Europe where the Germans had enacted their “final solution” to the “Jewish problem”: the wholesale extermination of some 6 million Jews along with more than 1 million other captured peoples. American officials and even some Jewish leaders had dragged their feet in acknowledging the Holocaust for fear that relief efforts for Jewish refugees might stir up latent anti-Semitism at home. FRD set up a War Refugee Board in early 1944. It managed to rescue about 200K European Jews and some 20K others. More might have been done by broadcasts warning people in Europe that Nazi “labor camps” were death traps. The Allies rejected a plan to bomb the rail lines into Auschwitz. And few refugees were accepted by the US. The Allied handling of the Holocaust was inept at best and disgraceful at worst.

Question 56

The American assault on Okinawa

Answer 56

Okinawa was strategically important because it would serve as the staging area for the planned invasion of Japan. The conquest of Japanese-controlled Okinawa was the largest amphibious operation of the Pacific war, involving some 300K troops, and it took almost 3 months to secure the island.

Question 57

The Potsdam Declaration

Answer 57

in mid-July, 1945 the Allied leaders met in Potsdam, Germany, near Berlin, to discuss the fate of defeated Germany and the ongoing war against Japan. While there, they issued the Potsdam Declaration, demanding that Japan surrender or face “prompt and utter destruction.” The deadline passed and on August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber named the Enola Gay took off at 2a.m. from the island of Tinian and headed for Hiroshima.

Question 58

The Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Answer 58

when the deadline of the Potsdam Declaration passed a B-29 bomber named the Enola Gay took off at 2a.m. from the island of Tinian and headed for Hiroshima. At 8:15a.m., flying at 31,600 feet, the Enola Gay released the 5 ton, 10 foot long uranium bomb nicknamed Little Boy. 43 seconds later tumbled to an altitude of 1900 feet, where it exploded, creating a blinding flash of light followed by a fireball towering to 40K feet. The bomb’s shockwave and firestorm killed some 78K people, including thousands of Japanese soldiers and 23 American prisoners of war housed in the city. By the end of the year, the death toll had reached 140K as the effects of radiation burns and infection took their toll. 70K buildings were destroyed, and 4 square miles of the city turned to rubble. Truman said “This is the greatest thing in history!” Americans greeted the news with similar elation. The atomic bomb promised a quick end to the long nightmare of war. 2 days after the bombing an opportunistic Soviet Union hastened to enter the war against Japan in order to share in the spoils of victory. Truman and his aides, frustrated by the stubborn refusal of Japanese leader to surrender and fearful that the Soviet Union’s entry into the war would complicate negotiations, ordered the second atomic bomb (“Fat Man”) dropped. On August 9, the city of Nagasaki, a shipbuilding center, experienced the same nuclear devastation that had destroyed Hiroshima.

Question 59

Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II

Answer 59

The night that “Fat Man” was dropped on Nagasaki the Japanese emperor urged his cabinet to surrender. Frantic exchanges between leaders in Washington, D.C., and Tokyo ended with Japanese acceptance of the surrender terms on August 14, 1945.

Question 60

World War II and the Great Depression

Answer 60

WWII transformed American life. It brought an end to the Great Depression and laid the foundation for an era of unprecedented prosperity. Big businesses were transformed into gigantic corporations as a result of huge government contracts for military production, and the size of the feral government bureaucracy mushroomed. The number of government employees increased 4-fold during the war. New technologies and products developed for military purposes—radar, computers, electronics, plastics and synthetics, jet engines, rockets, atomic energy—began to transform the private sector as well. And new opportunities for women as well as for AA, Mexican Americans, and other minorities set in motion major social changes that would culminate in the civil rights movement of the 1960’s and the feminist movement in the 70’s.

Question 61

Political and social radicalism after World War I

Answer 61

The 10 years between 1919 and the onset of the Great Depression at the end of 1929 encompassed a period of unprecedented economic prosperity and cultural experimentation as well as political conservatism and religious fundamentalism. Women were allowed to vote but beer and liquor were outlawed. Innovations such as national radio networks, talking motion pictures, mass ownership of automobiles, the emergence of national chain stores, popularity of spectator sports, and the rise of mass marketing and advertising transformed American into the world’s leading consumer society. The culture of mass consumption fueled the explosive growth of middle-class urban life. The 1920 census revealed that for the first time more Americans lived in cities rather than in rural areas. In the political arena reactionaries and rebels battled for control of post-war society roiling in conflict. The fight between Woodrow Wilson and the Republican-led Senate over the Versailles Treaty, coupled with the administration’s crackdown on dissenters and socialist, had weakened an already fragmented and disillusioned progressive movement. Amos Pinchot said President Wilson “put his enemies in office and his friends in jail.” By 1920 many alienated progressives had grown skeptical of any politician claiming to be a reformer or an idealist. Jane Addams said that the 1920’s were “a period of political and social sag.” Immediately after the war, there were strikes, some terrorists acts, racial violence and the Red Scare. Much of the politics of the 20’s was a reaction to this radicalism, especially Harding’s return to normalcy.