Fifth Party System [1933–1972] III Flashcards
Review - Timeline: Fighting the Good Fight in World War II, 1941-1945
1941: Lend Lease begins; Japanese planes bomb U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. 1942: ‘Fair Employment Practices Committee’ instituted; U.S. Navy defeats Japan at Midway; U.S. begins internment of Japanese Americans. 1943: Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin meet in Tehran; U.S. troops invade Italy. 1944: Allied Forces land in France for D-day invasion. 1945: Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa fought; Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin meet at Yalta; U.S. drops atomic bombs on Japan; WWII ends.
Timeline: Post-War Prosperity and Cold War Fears, 1945-1960
1946: George Kennan sends Long Telegram from Moscow. 1947: Truman Doctrine announced; first Levittown house sold. 1948: Berlin Airlift begins. 1950: North Korean troops cross 38th parallel. 1952: Dwight D. Eisenhower elected president. 1953: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed for espionage. 1954: Supreme Court rules on Brown v. Board of Education; Bill Haley and ‘His Comets’ record “Rock Around the Clock”. 1955: Montgomery bus boycott begins. 1957: Little Rock’s Central High School integrates; USSR launches Sputnik.
Japanese-American Internment - Discuss FDR’s Executive Order 9066.
Acting on the guise of military necessity, President Roosevelt issued ‘Executive Order 9066’, which authorized the military to exclude Japanese Americans from their communities, place them in internment camps indefinitely, and deprive them of their due process rights, including the right to a fair trial. This was to supposedly deter sabotage and spying by Japanese, even though there were never any documented cases of sabotage or spying.
Japanese-American Internment - Explore the circumstances that led to the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII.
Following the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered World War II. However, the attack also unleashed a wave of fear and prejudice directed towards Japanese Americans.
Japanese-American Internment - Understand the reparations that were eventually issued.
After the internment ended, most Japanese-Americans had few possessions and no job or money. They would have to start their lives again from scratch. By the 1970s, the survivors and their children began fighting for a government apology and reparations. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter created a commission to study the internment. In 1983, the commission released a report titled ‘Personal Justice Denied’, which described how horrible and unnecessary the camps truly were. Finally, in 1988, President Reagan signed a law that provided $20,000 for each remaining survivor, a government apology, and a fund to educate the public about the internment.
Japanese-American Internment - Detail the conditions at the internment camps.
Life at the camps was very harsh. According to a government report, the conditions were ‘subnormal’ and ‘not much above the bare subsistence level.’ Indeed, most internees lived in small, cramped, and poorly constructed rooms with one light bulb that dangled from the ceiling, no plumbing or cooking equipment, and little to no privacy. They were also forced to share other facilities, including a mess hall and group latrines. While most Japanese Americans tried to maintain some semblance of normal life, and a few even became decorated soldiers who fought in the war, there was no forgetting the barbed wire and armed patrols that surrounded their camp.
WWII European Theater - Outbreak - Date war started.
September 1st, 1939, German troops from the west and Russian from the east invaded Poland. Consequently, Great Britain and France finally declared war on Germany after years of appeasement. Adolph Hitler hated communists, but did not let this interfere with his plans.
WWII European Theater - Outbreak - Blitzkrieg
Blitzkrieg, aka ‘Lightning War’, is a method of warfare whereby an attacking force, spearheaded by a dense concentration of armored and motorized or mechanized infantry formations with close air support, breaks through the opponent’s line of defense by short, fast, powerful attacks and then dislocates the defenders, using speed and surprise to encircle them with the help of air superiority. Through the employment of combined arms in maneuver warfare, blitzkrieg attempts to unbalance the enemy by making it difficult for it to respond to the continuously changing front, then defeat it in a decisive Vernichtungsschlacht (battle of annihilation).
WWII European Theater - Outbreak - America’s Involvement.
The United States responded by passing the cash and carry policy, allowing for the sale of arms to belligerent nations if they could pay up front and transport them in their own ships. Though a series of ‘Neutrality Acts’ had expressly forbidden most types of economic, military, or commercial investments in the war, cash and carry allowed America to remain officially neutral, keep its ships out of danger from German U-boat attacks, avoid the credit problems that shrouded WWI, and yet still provide help to Britain. This was one of several steps that moved the U.S. towards war.
WWII European Theater - Scope
The war lasted a total fo six years in Europe and the Pacific. It was fought between the Axis Powers (Germany, Japan, and Italy) and the Allies (U.S., U.K., U.S.S.R., etc.). The European theater consisted of the western, eastern, and African fronts from the start of the war through 1943.
WWII European Theater - The Fall of Europe
It took one month for the Germans to overrun Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands and just six weeks to defeat France. In the ‘Miracle of Dunkirk’ the core of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was able to retreat from France back to Britain, however, much of their heavy equipment, vehicles, ammunition, and fuel were left behind. 35,000 French troops were also left behind.
WWII European Theater - The Battle of Britain
Beginning the summer of 1941 ’the Blitz’ began, with the Luftwaffe (German’s Air Force) dropping more than 100 tons of explosives on London and other British cities, ports, and airbases, mostly at night, for 10 months, in order to soften Britain for an invasion. In the end, the Germans failed because they didn’t expect Britain’s retaliatory bombing of Berlin, fierce fighting by the Royal Air Force (RAF), and American assistance.
WWII European Theater - The Battle of Britain - American Assistance
American assisted in the ‘Battle of Britain’ with the Lend-Lease Act (1941), which allowed for the purchase of war supplies on credit, traded old warships for naval bases in British colonies, instituted the first peacetime draft in the U.S.’s history, and some American pilots flew with the Royal Air Force (RAF).
WWII European Theater - Taking Back Western Europe - Operation Torch et. al.
In Northern Africa, the British were able to hold onto the Suez Canal and important oil fields in Egypt. After the U.S. entered the war, a joint U.S.-U.K. offensive reclaimed French colonies in N. Africa in ‘Operation Torch’. The region was then used to invade Sicily in the summer of 1943. This was a turning point in which the Allies were able to control the Mediterranean and prompted the Italian government to remove Mussolini from power and join the Allies. The Allies liberated Rome on June 4, 1944.
WWII European Theater - Taking Back Western Europe
In Northern Africa, the British were able to hold onto the Suez Canal and important oil fields in Egypt. After the U.S. entered the war, a joint U.S.-U.K. offensive reclaimed French colonies in N. Africa in ‘Operation Torch’. The region was then used to invade Sicily in the summer of 1943. This was a turning point in which the Allies were able to control the Mediterranean and prompted the Italian government to remove Mussolini from power and join the Allies. The Allies liberated Rome on June 4, 1944.
WWII European Theater - Taking Back Western Europe - Operation Overlord - D-Day
‘Operation Overlord’ was the code-name for the liberation of Europe. It involved 2 million men from many different countries, thousands of ships and airplanes. The first wave of invaders landed on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944, D-Day. The Allied assault was bloody, but successful, and by August, they had liberated Paris.
WWII European Theater - Taking Back Western Europe - Operation Overlord - Battle of the Bulge
As the Allies approached the Rhine River in December 1944, they were surprised by a Nazi counter-attack, known as the ‘Battle of the Bulge’. This was the Nazis last effort to repel the Allies by taking advantage of their extended supply lines. The Americans suffered approximately 77,000 casualties. By January 1945, the Allies had reclaimed the territory lost.
WWII European Theater - Taking Back Western Europe - Operation Overlord - VE Day
In February, Allied airstrikes, such as the re-bombing of Dresden, helped to weaken German resistance. In March, Britain and the United States were invading from the west while the Soviets invaded from the east. Hitler committed suicide and Germany surrendered. VE Day was May 8, 1945.
Harry Truman (D)
Harry Truman (1884-1972), the 33rd U.S. president, assumed office following the death of President Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945). In the White House from 1945 to 1953, Truman made the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan, helped rebuild postwar Europe, worked to contain communism and led the United States into the Korean War (1950-1953). A Missouri native, Truman assisted in running his family farm after high school and served in World War I (1914-1918). He began his political career in 1922 as a county judge in Missouri and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1934. Three months after becoming vice president in 1945, the plain-spoken Truman ascended to the presidency. In 1948, he was reelected in an upset over Republican Thomas Dewey (1902-1971). After leaving office, Truman spent his remaining two decades in Independence, Missouri, where he established his presidential library.
WWII Pacific Theater - Taking Back the Pacific - Iwo Jima and Okinawa and U.S. firebombing of Japan.
In March 1945, American troops conquered Iwo Jima because of its strategic location just 350 miles from Japan. The Japanese fought fiercely incurring a third of all Marine casualties in the entire war. At Okinawa, the U.S. faced stiffer resistance for three months, with a barrage of kamikaze attacks, suffering ~50,000 U.S. casualties and ~200,000 Japanese casualties. American bombers razed Japanese cities with millions left homeless and 100,000 dead in Tokyo alone. Despite all this, the Japanese refused to surrender.
WWII Pacific Theater - Taking Back the Pacific - Manhattan Project
The ‘Manhattan Project’ was a secret program to develop the atomic bomb under the leadership of J. Robert Oppenheimer. In 1939, Einstein and other leading scientists learned that Germany was working to split a uranium atom. The project grew to include 30 sites in the U.S., Canada, and Britain, with its HQ in the mountains of Los Alamos, NM. On July 16, 1945, the world’s first nuclear bomb was detonated at the ‘Trinity Site’ in the desert of southern New Mexico.
WWII Pacific Theater - Taking Back the Pacific - VJ Day
On August 15, 1945, the Emperor explained his decision to surrender in a radio broadcast to his people. Because of time zones, the announcement reached the United States on August 14, widely considered VJ Day in America, although a treaty wasn’t actually signed for several weeks. World War II was finally over.
WWII Pacific Theater - Taking Back the Pacific - Dropping the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
American planes dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, hoping to bring the war to a quick end. The slow progress of the island invasions and Japan’s refusal to surrender were becoming expensive, both in terms of dollars and casualties. Truman also justified the attack as retribution for Pearl Harbor. Finally, using this impressive new weapon was a way to send a warning message to Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union, with whom tensions were increasing quickly.
WWII - The Politics of War - Atlantic Charter
The joint statement, later dubbed the Atlantic Charter (1941), outlined US and UK aims for the world as follows: no territorial aggrandizement; no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people (self-determination); restoration of self-government to those deprived of it; reduction of trade restrictions; global cooperation to secure better economic and social conditions for all; freedom from fear and want; freedom of the seas; and abandonment of the use of force, as well as disarmament of aggressor nations. Adherents to the Atlantic Charter signed the Declaration by United Nations on 1 January 1942, which was the basis for the modern United Nations. The Atlantic Charter inspired several other international agreements and events that followed the end of the war: the dismantling of the British Empire, the formation of NATO, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) all derive from the Atlantic Charter.
