Strong isolationist sentiments
- FDR called "a spreading epidemic of national lawlessness"
    - Fascist countries like Germany, Japan, Italy were taking land,
      breaking int'l law
    - Wanted to help out GB, FR to stave off war
    - Fierce debate between isolationists and interventionists
Pearl Harbor ended the debate, involving the US in the World War.
- Unified the country, people rushing to enlist
- Huge government spending on Total War ended the Depression
End of the war created the Cold War betwen US and Soviet Union.

The Rise of Fascism in Europe
- Fascism: dictator using propaganda and brute force seizes all parts of
  civil life (press, etc)
- Expansionism in Japan based on "master race" ideas like Hitler's
- Took power over government that couldn't handle unemployment,
  depression
- Mussolini: "El Juche," coined fascism
    - Ordered political opponents murdered
    - Believed Hitler to be agressive and mad
- Hitler uses nativist appeals to the masses, "German master race"
    - "Democracy must be destroyed" -Hitler
    - Similar political totalitarianism to Italy
    - Book burning, tyrannical police state

Japanese occupy China
- China fragmented by civil war between communists and nationalists
    - Japanese proclaimed Manchuria independent
    - Battles escalated into Sino-Japanese war
        - Japanese captured capital, murdering and looting civilians
- Mussolini, similarly, was conquering Ethiopia
    - League of Nations retaliated w/ economic sanctions
- Germany began rebuilding their military in violation of Versailles
    - Put soldiers in the Rhineland
    - Convinced Western democracies were cowards who wouldn't stop him
- Good Neighbor Policy wanted to avoid intervention internationally
    - Nye Committee worried about "Merchants of Death," war profiteers
      who pushed America into war
    - FDR signed neutrality laws to avoid entry into the new war
    - 1935 Act: Prohibited American manufacturers from selling to
      belligerents
    - Roosevelt unsure US should remain neutral
        - Neutrality Act of 1937 allowed "cash and carry" sale of
          non-military goods

Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis Alliance in 1937
- Germany seizes Austria, puts up "Jews not wanted" signs
    - No nation stepped up because Europe couldn't understand his
      ambition, moves, and lunacy
    - Germany used threat of war to steal the Sudetenland
        - Britain and France appeased him with Czech territory
        - 1938: French and GB prime ministers transferred it
            - Munich Pact
        - Germany was not satisfied and took the rest of Czechoslovakia
    - Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact masks Hitler's intention to take
      Ukraine
        - Stalin made a Great Purge of political (including Communist
          Party) enemies.
        - Sovs and Germans split up Eastern Europe
    - Millions of Poles arrested, enslaved, murdered

Spring (after a 3mo wait) 1940: Germany begins attacking Denmark,
Norway, France
    - Used Blitzkrieg strategy to stun opponents
    - GB is left standing alone
        - Churchill calls Allies a colossal military disaster
        - Churchill evacuates >300K of other Allies' troops from Dunkirk
    - Mussolini also declares war on France, GB
    - Germans want to destroy Royal Air Force, deploying 2500 airplanes,
      2:1 ratio to GB
    - Wanted Brits to defend Britain in their "finest hour"
    - German bombers targeted British cities in night-raids "Blitz"
    - Britain wins Battle of Britain; Germany switches focus back to Sov
    - Churchill asked for any aid, specifically destroyers
        - FDR gave "all aid short of war," destroyer battleships
        - In exchange for mil bases in Brit. colonies
        - Congress approved Selective Service Act of peacetime draft
- The War revitalized FDR
    - Charles Lindbergh, America First leader, claimed Jews in America
      pushed FDR to the brink of war
        - That Britain was doomed and to join hands with Hitler
        - "Disenfranchise the negro,"
- Wilkie (pres opponent) opposed FDR believing he would intervene
    - "Your boys will not go into any foreign wars"
    - Lend-Lease Act surpassed Cash-Carry, allowing Roosevelt to sell
      weapons for the defense of the United States
Escalations in the War
- German troops joined Italians in Libya
- Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria under control of Germany; ambition unbound
- Operation Barbarossa: Germany invaded Soviets to
    - destroy communism, enslave the population, and take natural rsrcs
    - Turning point of the war
    - German forces surround Leningrad
        - Winter set in, but Leningrad held out despite dying people
        - Some German armies reach Moscow
    - For isolationists, wanted to bleed the dictatorships to the death
        - Keep Nazis fighting USSR to protect Britain
        - US sends enough supplies to clothe every Russian soldier
    - Stalin classified surrendering soldiers as traitors
    - By late summer of 1941, US was no longer neutral
        - With Churchill, Roosevelt drew up Atlantic Charter to promote
          self-determination, economic cooperation, sea freedom, and UN
        - Undeclared war in Atlantic told warships to protect convoys
          across to Iceland
        - Germany began to sink German warships
        - 1940: US freezes all Japanese assets and embargoes
            - Tripartite pact of Axis declared mutual protection against
              any attack of any nation
            - Japan needed oil, declared full control of French Indoch
            - Time Magazine claimed restriction of oil exports was war
            - Embargo purportedly because of Chinese occupation
            - US and Japan realize attacks would happen. Japan secretly
              sends out surprise battleship attack to Hawaii
                - Failed because bombers ignored maintenance, oil tanks
    - After Pearl Harbor, Congress authorizes war on Japan
        - Hitler believed he couldn't lose the war

- US attacks U-Boats, which had been a major strategic advantage
    - Stalin insisted Brits and Americans attack Nazis to draw them
      out of Russia.
        - Instead, they attack strongholds in Eastern countries
    - Treaty required defeat of Germany before Japan
    - Roosevelt, first president to fly abroad or go to Africa during
      pres, meets at Casablanca.
        - Roosevelt and Churchill step up bombing campaign against Germ
        - Increase supplies to Germany
        - Attack Sicily
        - Americans announce the war will only end on unconditional
          surrender
    - Germany defends Sicilian attack; maintains stalemate
        - Jun 1944, US forces enter Rome. Allies took control of Italy
    - Tehran developed United Nations
        - Roosevelt had "grown to like Stalin"; Stalin bugged Roosevelt
- Dwight Eisenhower --- Supreme Allied Commander --- plans Operation
  Overlord
    - Very detail-oriented
    - Huge gamble, most complex operation
    - Amassed 5 million tons of military equipment
    - 370K soldiers of 5K ships attacked Normandy
    - Much drowning and capsizing, misdelivered boats, bodies pile up
    - In 3 weeks, Allies had landed more than a million troops
        - Small compared to Soviet offensive a few weeks later
            - Killed, wounded, captured more German soldiers (350K) than
              stationed in all of Western Europe a few weeks later
    - D-Day was a turning point: final victory a matter of time
    - Managed to surprise Germans; fooled them into thinking it was Lise
    - Germany was teetering
- Yalta Declaration saved face for US,UK
    - Soviet Army "liberated" Eastern Germany, Czech, others. Plundered
      resources and rebuilded in the Union, imprisoning dissenters
    - Yalta Conference agreed to UN meetings
    - Roosevelt died before Germany surrendered
- Hitler married his mistress Eva Braun the day of surrender
    - Mussolini and wife killed and hung
    - Eva and Adolf bodies were burned after poison/bullet
    - V- "Victory in Europe" Day
    - Japan still ongoing and Europe needed rebuilding

The Holocaust
- Systematic pogrom against Jews
- Not fully revealed until the end of the war
    - Although stories were coming out in 1942
    - Ghastly stories were beyond belief until the Allies liberated.
    - Eisenhower made sick by the Holocaust
    - American anti-semitism was feared, so American Senators wouldn't
      acknowledge Holocaust before it was undeniably revealed.