Chapter 22 condensed notes

Introduction
➔​ Four Freedoms → painting by Normal Rockwell that depicted freedom of speech,
freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear
◆​ Roosevelt’s favorite statement of Allied aims
➔​ Wartime mobilization expanded size and scope of government and energized the
economy
◆​ Gross national product more than doubled, unemployment disappeared as war
production conquered Depression
◆​ Demand for labor drew millions of women into workforce, challenging traditional
gender relations but not all women wanted that, and rural to the cities
◆​ Military industrial complex → close link between big business and militarized
federal government

Fighting World War II

➔​ Good Neighbors
◆​ Good Neighbor Policy offered belated recognition of sovereignty of America's
neighbors, but also lent aid to dictators like in Nicaragua, Dominican Republic,
and Cuba
➔​ The Road to War
◆​ Japan invaded Manchuria and overran city of Nanjing, killing 300,000 Chinese
prisoners of war and civilians, Mussolini and Hitler were at work conquering
Europe, America tried to stay out of it
◆​ Roosevelt was afraid of Hitler and tried to “appease” him by agreeing to his
demands to prevent war
➔​ Isolationism
◆​ Many businessmen did business with the Nazis like Henry Ford, including a lot of
useful wartime material
◆​ People were convinced that involvement in WWI was a mistake
◆​ Isolationism → 1930s version of Americans’ long standing desire to avoid
foreign entanglements
◆​ Neutrality Acts → banned travel of belligerents ships and sale of arms to
countries at war
➔​ The War in Europe
◆​ Battle of Britain of 1940-1941 → German planes launched devastating attacks
on London and other cities
➔​ Toward Intervention
◆​ FDR got a third term because of international unrest
●​ Announced that America would become “arsenal of democracy” to
provide Britain and China with military supplies
➔​ “America First” and Lend-Lease
◆​ America First Committee → led by conservative businessmen opposed to
Roosevelt’s domestic and foreign policy, were against entering WWII
 ◆​ Lend-Lease Act → authorized military aid so long as countries promised to
return it after the war
●​ Was passed because Britain went broke
●​ US also stopped trade with Japan
➔​ Pearl Harbor
◆​ Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor to cripple American naval power in the Pacific
◆​ This caused many people to want to get revenge and Roosevelt declared war
➔​ The War in the Pacific
◆​ Japan conquered Burma, Thailand, Indonesia, Guam, Philippines, Pacific islands
●​ In the philippines Japan forced 78,000 Americans to surrender
➔​ The War in Europe
◆​ Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin
◆​ Stalingrad was turning point of WWII

The Home Front

➔​ Mobilizing for War
◆​ Military service threw together Americans from every region, and almost every
race (Black people were still segregated)
◆​ FDR created federal agencies like War Production Board, War Manpower
Commission, Office of Price Administration to regulate allocation of labor, control
shipping industry, establish manufacturing quotas, fix wages, prices, and rents
➔​ Business and the War
◆​ Thousands of aircrafts, 100,000 armored vehicles, 2.5 million trucks were
produced, and new products like synthetic rubber replaced natural resources
controlled by Japan
◆​ More people went from agricultural to industrial employment
➔​ Labor in Wartime
◆​ Government forced companies to recognize unions, and when Montgomery Ward
didn’t, army seized headquarters and evicted president
◆​ Union membership reached 15 million by 1945
➔​ Fighting for the Four Freedoms
◆​ Mexican War and WWI had deeply divided American society, but WWII united
people
◆​ Used “freedom” to incite people to join WWII
◆​ “Freedom from want” meant elimination of barriers to international trade
➔​ The Fifth Freedom
◆​ Private companies said there was a “fifth freedom” of “free enterprise”
➔​ Women At Work
◆​ Hollywood films glorified independent women, and private advertising celebrated
achievements of female industrial laborers
◆​ Women made up more than ⅓ of civilian workforce because men were in army,
and 350,000 women were in military units

Visions of Postwar Freedom

 ➔​ Toward an American Century
◆​ Promise of prosperity unified New Dealers and conservatives
●​ The American Century by Henry Luce to mobilize American people for the
coming war and era of postwar world leadership
○​ Luce insisted that Americans should embrace the role history had
thrust on them as “dominant power in the world” and said that after
the war Americans would have “free economic enterprise”
●​ Henry Wallace (vice president of Roosevelt) had an address called “The
Price of Free World Victory” that predicted war would usher in “century of
the common man” and government would act to “humanize” capitalism
and redistribute economic resources to eliminate hunger, illiteracy, and
poverty
●​ The one thing they had in common was new conception of America’s role
in the world; idea that America should serve as model for all other nations
➔​ “The Way of Life of Free Men”
◆​ Board called for a “new bill of rights” that would include All Americans in
expanded Social Security system and guarantee access to education, health
care, adequate housing, jobs for able-bodied adults
◆​ FDR proposed to expand government power to secure full employment,
adequate income, medical care, education, decent home for all Americans
◆​ Servicemen’s Readjustment Act/GI Bill of Rights → farthest reaaching pieces
of social legislation in American history aimed to reward members of armed
forces for service and prevent widespread unemployment and economic
disruption that followed WWI
➔​ The Road to Serfdom
◆​ The Road to Serfdom → best-seller by Friedrich A. Hayek, claimed that best
intentioned government efforts to direct economy posed a threat to individual
liberty

The American Dilemma

➔​ Patriotic Assimilation
◆​ Government said that what set US apart from wartime foes was not only
dedication to ideals of Four Freedoms but also principle that Americans of all
races, religions, and national origins could enjoy those freedoms equally
●​ Enemified Racism, so immigrants were accepted as loyal ethnic
Americans
○​ Despite this, many businesses and government circles still
excluded Jewish people
●​ Brought the case of the actual status of Black people to the table
◆​ WWII created vast melting pot especially for European immigrants
◆​ Millions of Americans moved out of urban ethnic neighborhoods and rural
enclaves into army and industrial plants
➔​ The Bracero Program
◆​ War had far more ambiguous meaning for non-white groups
 ●​ On eve of Pearl Harbor, Black people were still segregated, Asians
couldn’t immigrate to US or become naturalized, First Nations still lived on
reservations or in poverty
◆​ Bracero program → tens of thousands of contract laborers crossed into US to
take up jobs as domestic and agricultural workers
●​ More than 4.5 million Mexicans entered US under labor contracts
●​ Mexican American women gained new opportunnities for public
participation and higher incomes
◆​ Zoot suit riots → club-wielding sailors and policemen attacked Mexican
American youths wearing flamboyant clothing in LA, illustrating limits of wartime
tolerance
◆​ Contrast between war’s rhetoric of freedom and pluralism and reality of continued
discrimination inspired heightened consciousness of civil rights
➔​ The War and Indigenous Freedom
◆​ Many First Nations joined military or worked in wartime industry, farms, or military
installations to escape poverty, but some viewed it as being patriotic to white
Americans and refused
◆​ US took First Nation land for military purposes and built two internment camps
➔​ Bound By War
◆​ China was an ally in WWII (more than 50,000 Asian Americans fought in US
Army) mostly in all-Asian units
◆​ Americans discriminated Japanese, and Japanese discriminated Americans
●​ Americans tried to let German Americans and Italian Americans off easy,
but viewed every person of Japanese ethnicity as a potential spy
➔​ Japanese American Internment
◆​ Executive Order 9066 → ordered relocation of all Japanese people from West
Coast (did not paply to Japanese people in Hawaii because they made up 40% of
workforce)
●​ Japanese lived in very bad conditions and even dangerous ones; were
treated like prisoners
●​ Greatest violated of civil rights since slavery
◆​ Korematsu v. United States → Korematsu refused to present himself for
internment, Court denied him
◆​ Then government forced Japanese Americans to swear loyalty and join the army,
those who didn’t were arrested
➔​ Black People and the War
◆​ Nazi Germany said American practices wre proof of its own race policies
◆​ Washington remained segregated
◆​ Red Cross refused to mix blood from Black and white people
◆​ Second Great Migration → war spurred movement of Black population from
rural South to North and West; 700,000 Black people migrated
➔​ Black People and Military Service
◆​ Navy accepted Black people as only waiters and cooks
◆​ During war, more than 1 million Black people served in armed forces
 ●​ Black soldiers sometimes had to give up their seats on railroad cars to
accommodate Nazi prisoners of war
➔​ Birth of the Civil Rights Movement
◆​ A. Philip Randolph called for a March on Washington
●​ Wanted access to defense employment, end to segregation, national
antilynching law
●​ Scared the government a lot
●​ Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 which banned discrimination in
defense jobs and established Fair Employment Practices Commission
to monitor compliance
○​ First federal agency since Reconstruction to campaign for equal
opportunity for Black Americans
➔​ The Double-V
◆​ double-V → Victory over Germany must be accompanied by victory over
segregation at home
◆​ Different interpretations of freedom
●​ Black people: goal to be achieved: end to lynching, no more
discrimination in getting jobs
●​ White people: possession to be defended
➔​ The War and Race
◆​ National War Labor Board banned racial wage differentials
◆​ Smith v. Allwright → Supreme Court outlawed all white primaries
◆​ Soldiers be allowed to vote without paying poll tax, enabling thousands of Black
men to cast ballots for first time
➔​ An American Dilemma
◆​ An American Dilemma was sprawling account of country’s racial past, present,
and future written by Swedish social scientist Gunnar Myrdal
●​ Showed how deeply racism was entrenched in law, politics, economics,
and social behavior
➔​ Black Internationalism
◆​ Black Americans tried to end colonization of Africa

The End of the War

➔​ “The Most Terrible Weapon”
◆​ V-E Day → formal end to the war against Germany
◆​ Truman didn’t know about the bomb until after he became president
◆​ Manhattan Project → top secret program in which American scientists
developed atomic bomb during WWII; tested successfully in New Mexico desert
➔​ The Dawn of the Atomic Age
◆​ Bombing of Hiroshima
●​ 140,000 people died
●​ In Nagasaki, another 70,000 people killed
◆​ Soviet then declared war on Japan and within a week, Japan surrendered
➔​ The Nature of the War
 ◆​ WWII was the first time innocent civilians were ruthlessly targeted (20 million out
of 50 million deaths were civilians)
➔​ Planning the Postwar World
◆​ Potsdam conference → allied leaders established military administration for
Germany and agreed to place top Nazi leaders on trial for war crimes
◆​ Yalta conference → Stalin made Eastern Europe a Soviet sphere of influence,
and Britain and US couldn’t stop them because he won the war on that front
➔​ Yalta and Bretton Woods
◆​ At Yalta, Roosevelt and Churchill entered mild protest against Soviet plans to
retain control of Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) and large part of eastern
Poland to restore Russia’s pre-WWI western borders
◆​ Tensions existed between Britain and US: Churchill rejected American pressure
to place India and other British colonies on road to independence and concluded
private deals with Stalin to divide southern and Eastern Europe into British and
Soviet spheres of influence
◆​ Bretton Woods conference → replaced British pound with dollar as main
currency for international transactions and created two American-dominated
financial institutions:
●​ World Bank that provided money to developing countries and helped
rebuild Europe
●​ The International Monetary Fund that worked to prevent governments
from devaluing their currencies to gain advantage in international trade,
as many did during Depression
●​ Believed these would incourage free trade and growth of world economy
➔​ The United Nations
◆​ United Nations → organization of the world’s nations to maintain world peace
●​ General Assembly → forum for discussion where each member enjoyed
equal voice
●​ Security Council also responsible
○​ 5 permanent members: Britain, China, France, Soviet Union,
United States, each with power to veto resolutions
◆​ 51 countries met in San Francisco to adopt UN Charter
◆​ Almost everyone was pro-United Nations
➔​ Peace, but Not Harmony
◆​ WWII produced radical redistribution of world power; Japan and Germany were
defeated, Britain and France won but were weakened, only US and Soviet had
significant influence beyond national borders but especially US
◆​ Dropping of atomic bomb left worldwide legacy of fear
◆​ Soviet’s sphere of influence in Europe created division with other countries
◆​ Despite Roosevelt’s promises of the Four Freedoms, people thought he wasn’t
sticking to them because India and Africa was still colonized and exploited by
Britain and America was discriminating Black people