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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.
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