Chapter 25: America’s Rise to World Leadership, 1929-1945 1
CHAPTER 25
America’s Rise to World Leadership, 1929-1945
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After you read and analyze this chapter, you should be able to:
1.Analyze the foreign policy constraints Roosevelt faced before 1939 and tell how they shaped America’s foreign policy choices from 1932 to the outbreak of World War II.
2.Explain what measures Roosevelt took between 1935 and December 1941 to help defeat Hitler and deal with Japanese aggression.
3.Understand what new opportunities women and minorities encountered on the home front as they responded to the war.
4.Evaluate the strategic choices and constraints Roosevelt and Truman confronted in making the decisions that shaped the course of the war against Germany and Japan.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I.Road to War
A.Diplomacy in a Dangerous World
1.Roosevelt followed Hoover’s Good Neighbor policy toward Latin America.
a)Cuba and Mexico soon tested the noninterventionism of the Good Neighbor policy.
2.Elsewhere in the world, the ongoing Depression led to international crises that threatened peace.
a)Japan’s successful conquest of Manchuria magnified the power of its pro-imperial factions as many Japanese spoke of establishing a Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.
B.Roosevelt and Isolationism
1.Tensions were increasing, however, in Europe and Asia.
a)In Germany, Hitler had ruthlessly instituted a dictatorship by 1935, and the Japanese had conquered Manchuria and sought to establish the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.
b)Although the United States granted recognition of the Soviet Union in November 1933, the Soviets had too little credit to buy American goods, and the United States was unwilling to provide it; the nations still distrusted one another.
2.By 1934, isolationists were in full cry, even repudiating the U.S. entry into World War I, especially after the Nye Committee concluded that profits and British propaganda had caused America’s entry into the first conflict.
3.By 1935, tensions in Asia and Europe combined with American isolationism to generate neutrality laws that many hoped would prevent American involvement in future foreign wars.
a)The Neutrality Act of 1935 prohibited the sale of arms and munitions to any nation at war.
b)The 1937 Neutrality Act established “cash-and-carry”: it required warring nations to pay cash for all “nonwar” goods and to carry them on their own ships.
C.War and American Neutrality
1.As Europe rushed into war, the United States had little desire to come to the aid of Poland, Britain, or France, and public isolationism remained strong.
a)Roosevelt had a different view because he was determined to do everything possible, short of war, to help those nations opposing Hitler.
b)When Germany invaded Poland, FDR proclaimed the nation neutral but emphasized that he could not ask Americans to be neutral in their thoughts.
2.The Third Neutrality Act of 1939 allowed any nation to buy weapons from the United States, but Roosevelt knew that the British navy would deny the Germans access.
a)As Roosevelt shaped American neutrality, Hitler mopped up Polish resistance and quietly readied his army for an attack on the West in the spring.
b)Not so secretly, the Soviets continued their expansion by incorporating the Baltic Republics.
c)Germany and Italy, called the Axis powers, controlled almost all of western and central Europe, leaving Britain to face the seemingly invincible German army and air force alone.
d)Britain’s new prime minister, Winston Churchill, however, was already turning to Roosevelt for aid; Roosevelt responded favorably to his requests.
e)The Burke-Wadsworth Act was the first peacetime military draft in the nation’s history, and by the end of 1940, Congress had approved over $37 billion in military expenditures—more than the total cost of World War I.
f)The election results in 1940 demonstrated solid personal support for Roosevelt but not for the Democratic Party, which lost three Senate seats.
D.The Battle for the Atlantic
1.By December 1940, Churchill had asked Roosevelt for loans to pay for supplies and for help to protect merchant ships from German submarines, and Roosevelt again agreed.
a)Roosevelt presented Congress with the Lend-Lease Bill, which would allow the president to lend, lease, or in any way dispose of war materials to any country considered vital to American security.
2.With the Battle for the Atlantic reaching a turning point, Roosevelt and Churchill met secretly in August 1941, and, for the first time, both leaders sensed some room for optimism.
a)Churchill and Roosevelt produced the Atlantic Charter, which set forth the Wilsonian goals of self-determination, freedom of trade on the seas, no territorial gains, and the establishment of a “permanent system of general security” in the form of a new world organization.
E.Pearl Harbor
1.Throughout 1941, FDR had to balance Britain’s desperate needs with those of his own military, which pressed him for more equipment to strengthen the nation’s position in the Pacific.
a)Since 1937, Japanese troops had seized more and more of coastal China, while the United States did little but protest.
b)In July 1940, Roosevelt acted on public sentiment and placed some restrictions on Japanese-American trade, forbidding the sale and shipment of aviation fuel and scrap iron.
c)Americans prepared for war, but Japan moved first.
2.The Japanese planned to attack the American fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor.
a)Seven battleships were destroyed or badly damaged and 11 others were hit, nearly 200 aircraft were destroyed, and 2,500 Americans died.
b)Fortunately, the U.S. aircraft carriers were on maneuvers in the Pacific and not at Pearl Harbor and the repair shops, dry docks, and oil storage tanks incurred only light damage.
3.On December 8, the United States declared war on Japan, and Germany and Italy soon declared war on the United States.
II.America Responds to War
A.Japanese American Internment
1.The feelings against Japanese Americans were a product of long-standing racist attitudes and an immediate reaction to the war.
a)Although some doubted the reality of any threat from the Japanese American community, no one came forward to protest its treatment.
b)In 1942, FDR signed Executive Order #9066, which allowed the military to remove anyone deemed a threat from official military areas; the entire West Coast was declared a military area.
c)By the summer of 1942, over 110,000 Nisei and Issei had been transported to 10 internment camps.
d)Aware of rapidly growing anti-Japanese public opinion, Roosevelt waited until after the 1943 elections to allow internees who passed a loyalty review to go home; a year later, the camps were empty.
B.Mobilizing the Nation for War
1.President Roosevelt called on Americans to produce the goods necessary for victory, and any anti-business attitude disappeared.
a)By 1942, one-third of all American production was geared to the war, and the government was allocating millions of dollars to improve production and to build new plants in vital industries like aluminum and synthetic rubber.
b)By the end of the war, the United States had pumped over $320 billion into the American economy, and the final production amounts exceeded almost everyone’s expectations.
2.As the nation’s economy began to retool to become the arsenal of democracy, the Office of Price Administration was established to control prices and inflation.
a)In May 1943, Roosevelt further expanded government planning and direction over the economy by establishing the Office of War Mobilization.
b)The war brought an end to the Depression and created full employment.
C.Wartime Politics
1.As Roosevelt mobilized the nation for war, Republicans and conservative Democrats moved to bury what was left of the New Deal.
a)To keep the social image of the New Deal alive during the election year of 1944, Roosevelt called for a GI Bill of Rights and a commitment to achieving “freedom from want.”
b)Roosevelt won reelection against Republican Thomas Dewey in 1940.
D.A People at Work and War
1.One sure sign of war was that people were moving and taking new jobs as never before.
a)To fill the gaps in the workforce, employers increasingly turned to those excluded prior to the war: women and minorities.
b)With their expanding populations, war industrial cities experienced massive problems providing homes, water, electricity, and sanitation.
c)Contributing to the old problem of prostitution was the new problem posed by many unsupervised teenage children.
E.New Opportunities and Old Constraints in Wartime
1.Minorities and women confronted new roles and accepted new responsibilities, both on the home front and in the military.
2.The military branches were pushed to create new roles for women.
3.As more jobs opened, women did fill them—some because of patriotism, but most because they wanted both the job and the wages.
a)Despite the patriotic appeal and image, not all was ideal at work, since male workers often resented and harassed women and continually reminded them that their jobs were temporary.
4.Like the war experiences of women, those of minorities were mixed.
a)New employment and social opportunities existed, but they were accompanied by increased racial and ethnic tensions and the knowledge that, when the war ended, the opportunities were likely to vanish.
b)The opportunities and realities of African Americans in uniform matched those of black civilians.
c)Mexican Americans, too, found new opportunities during the war while encountering continued segregation and hostility.
III.Waging World War
A.Halting the Japanese Advance
1.In the Pacific theater, the victory at Midway in mid-1942 gave American forces naval and air superiority over Japan and allowed the use of carrier task forces to begin tightening the noose around Japan.
B.The Tide Turns in Europe
1.In Europe, too, the Allies began to meet with some success, although at great cost.
a)While the British and Americans advanced across France, Allied bombers and fighter-bombers were doing what they had been doing since the spring of 1942, bombing German-held Europe night and day.
b)Vital industries and transportation systems were destroyed by what at times seemed to be around-the-clock bombing.
2.At the Tehran Conference, the Big Three agreed to coordinate a Soviet offensive with Allied landings at Normandy.
a)Operation Overlord was the greatest amphibious assault ever assembled.
C.Stresses in the Grand Alliance
1.In February 1945, the Big Three met at Yalta amid growing apprehension about Soviet territorial and political goals in Eastern Europe.
a)First and foremost, Roosevelt needed a Soviet declaration of war on Japan and support for the new United Nations, since both were necessary to usher in peace and international stability.
b)Roosevelt permitted Stalin to keep what he already had, or could easily take, to ensure Soviet cooperation.
D.Defeating Hitler
1.The Battle of the Bulge cost Germany valuable reserves and equipment, and ultimately it merely hastened the end of the war.
a)At the end of April, Hitler committed suicide, since he was unwilling to be captured.
b)Roosevelt died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage a few weeks before.
2.Hitler’s Holocaust was responsible for the killing of six million civilian Jews.
E.Closing the Circle on Japan
1.More and more American lives were being lost as the Allies circled the Japanese—who planned to fight to the death.
F.Entering a Nuclear Age
1.The A-bomb was the product of years of British-American research and development—the Manhattan Project.
2.The Potsdam Declaration called upon Japan to surrender by August 1945 or face total destruction; after August 3, Truman ordered the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
a)World War II was over, but much of the world lay in ruins.
IDENTIFICATIONS
Identify the following items and explain the significance of each. While you should include any relevant historical terms, using your own words to write these definitions will help you better remember these items for your next exam.
1.Sybil Lewis
2.segregation
3.domestic workers
4.discrimination
5.Franklin D. Roosevelt
6.World War II
7.Good Neighbor policy
8.Colonel Fulgencio Batista
9.nationalize
10.Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere
11.Neutrality Act of 1935
12.discriminatory neutrality
13.Rhineland
14.Neutrality Act of 1937
15.German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact
16.Neutrality Act of 1939
17.Axis powers
18.Winston Churchill
19.Battle of Britain
20.Burke-Wadsworth Act
21.Wendell Wilkie
22.Lend-Lease Act
23.Atlantic Charter
24.Nisei
25.Issei
26.Japanese American internment
27.Executive Order #9066
28.internment camps
29.Daniel Ken Inouye
30.Office of Price Administration
31.Office of War Mobilization
32.James F. Byrnes
33.closed shop
34.Smith-Connally War Labor Dispute Act
35.war bond
36.statism
37.GI Bill
38.Harry S Truman
39.victory garden
40.allotment checks
41.A. Philip Randolph
42.Fair Employment Practices Commission
43.Congress of Racial Equality
44.noncommissioned officer
45.Benjamin O. Davis, Sr.
46.braceros
47.pachucos
48.zoot suiters
49.code talkers
50.Joint Chief of Staff
51.Dwight David Eisenhower
52.Battle of the Coral Sea
53.Midway Island
54.Guadalcanal Island
55.Battle of Stalingrad
56.Tehran Conference
57.Operation Overlord
58.popular front
59.Yalta
60.United Nations
61.General Assembly
62.Security Council
63.Battle of the Bulge
64.Holocaust
65.Final Solution
66.V-E Day
67.Battle of Leyte Gulf
68.Okinawa
69.Manhattan Project
70.nuclear age
71.Potsdam Declaration
72.Hiroshima
73.Nagasaki
74.Rev. Clayton D. Russell
MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS
Select the correct answer.
1.As part of the Good Neighbor policy, the Roosevelt Administration
a.provided large financial aid grants to Mexico and Haiti.
b.decided to permit unrestricted immigration from Mexico.
c.ended all tariff restrictions in the Western Hemisphere.
d.veered away from the earlier practice of intervening militarily in Latin American nations.
2.Passage of neutrality acts in 1935, 1937, and 1939
a.reflected Roosevelt’s determination to stay out of European affairs at any cost.
b.was the American response to decisions made by the League of Nations.
c.mirrored public sentiment in favor of isolationism.
d.resulted from Germany’s warnings to the United States to stay out of European affairs.
3.The congressional reaction to the Panay incident made it obvious that Congress
a.was prepared to abandon isolationism to defend American honor.
b.was unwilling to check Japanese militarism.
c.was prepared to support the president in his Pacific policy.
d.would not tolerate German threats of war.
4.The Lend-Lease Act
a.required Britain to lease bases in its Asian colonies to the United States in return for American loans to fight the Germans.
b.provided Roosevelt with the means to supply Britain, even though the United States was still neutral.
c.won the support of isolationists because it did not commit America to either side in the European war.
d.was pushed through Congress by corporations eager to profit from the war in Europe.
5.A critical result of the battle for the Atlantic was that
a.Germany destroyed almost the entire British fleet.
b.the United States withdrew most of its ships from the Pacific, making Japan confident that the United States would not object to its expansion.
c.Germany’s submarines were driven from the seas, making it possible for Britain to be rearmed by the United States.
d.the United States repealed all its neutrality laws and thus moved closer to war with Germany.
6.Tension between the United States and Japan increased when
a.Japan joined in an alliance with Germany and Italy.
b.the Japanese ambassador threatened that his nation would attack the Philippines.
c.Washington and Tokyo broke off all negotiations a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
d.Roosevelt decided to prohibit the sale of rice to Japan.
7.When President Roosevelt noted that December 7, 1941, was “a day which will live in infamy,” he referred to
a.the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
b.the break in diplomatic relations between the United States and Japan.
c.Hitler’s signing of a defense pact with Japan.
d.Congress’s rejection of a new Lend-Lease Act.
8.Inflation did NOT become a serious problem during the war because
a.labor became scarce when millions of men entered the army.
b.businessmen voluntarily did not raise prices as a patriotic gesture.
c.it became a felony to raise prices.
d.the government established price and wage controls throughout the economy.
9.With the outbreak of the war, the New Deal
a.was accelerated to provide even more jobs.
b.was quickly put aside.
c.was pronounced a success and quickly ended.
d.proceeded at the same pace.
10.Native Americans during World War II
a.were, like African Americans, segregated in the military.
b.refused to support the war effort because of the mistreatment they had suffered in the past.
c.on the whole benefited from their wartime experiences.
d.suffered casualties on the battlefront way in excess of their proportion among the general population.
11.The Battle of Midway Island was of decisive importance in the war because
a.Japan sued for peace because of its great losses but refused to surrender unconditionally.
b.Japan’s aircraft carriers and air superiority were thoroughly broken.
c.the Marines emerged as the American force most capable of waging jungle warfare.
d.of the island’s strategic location.
12.Women in the industrial workforce during World War II
a.were generally rare.
b.were typically welcomed by their male counterparts.
c.experienced a new equality even after the war had ended.
d.were called upon to work outside the home to help win the war.
13.Even during the war, tensions between the Allies began to surface over