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The End of WWII and the Origins of the Cold War
- How did the US end the war in the Pacific?
- How did the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union begin?

Japan had successfully captured many colonies in the Pacific.
In Phillippines, soldiers forced to march hundreds of miles in 6 days.
    10K die
US not doing good in battle.
Victory Disease pushes Japan into Australia.
- US wins Battle of the Coral Sea
    - The Battle of Midway was battleship attack by Japan
        - Military code cracked, so US headed to the fleet; crippled
          Japanese fleet
            - first major Japanese navy defeat in >300yrs
        - developed island hopping strategy to reduce Japanese power in
          the Pacific
            - Cut Japanese off from natural resources
            - Kamikazes began to develop
            - Japanese were hurt worse than American forces
- US secures Okinawa and Iwo Jima in bloody battles
    - Okinawa was an amphibious operation w/ 300K troops over 3mo
    - Begin invading mainland Japan
    - Allied Commanders set up bombing raids over Japan in Summer of
      1944
    - Napalm dropped on Tokyo, incinerating 16 sq mi, killing thousands,
      dehoming a million.
        - No qualms about harming civilians
        - Burning of Manilla, brutal treatment of Chinese civilians,
          PoWs had eroded military sympathy for the Japanese.
    - Firebombing; no public outcry
    - Japanese refused to surrender.
        - Began considering The Ultimate Weapon (atomic bomb)
            - Manhattan Project established in response to Germans
              developing a bomb of their own.
            - Damage from the bomb underestimated
        - GB recognized puppet gov'ts in Eastern Europe. US said it
          would veto participation in UN until democracy established.
    - Potsdam Declaration - Japan must surrender by Aug 3.
        - The deadline passed, and bomber heads for Hiroshima.
        - The Hiroshima bomb killed 78K instantly. 70K instantly at
          Nagasaki
            - "like a glimpse into hell"
        - August 14, 1945: V-J Day as Japanese emperor accepts surrender

- Stalin increasingly became to believe US threatened Soviets
    - Hugely increasing military power of the US
    - For every American killed in WW2, 59 Soviets died
    - Reshaped and transformed int'l relations and societies
    - Fall of China to Communism
    - American Hegemony
    - Developed internationalism over isolationism
    - Expansion of Fed. Gov. increased after 1945
        - Pres authority also continued to increase greatly
    - Cold War was fundamentally "communism vs capitalism,"
      "totalitarianism vs democracy"
        - A war of words
        - Collapsed after the German threat went away

ENDED AT PART TWO