AP US History
March 20-25 2017
Ø As soon as you see the lesson plan below you'll know something is weird. That something is the ACT. Juniors will be taking this on Tuesday most likely from 8am-11:30am if most years are any indication. Now, as I am writing this plan on 3-14-2017 and we often never know what's going on until the last possible moment, we'll have to be flexible.
Ø Afternoon classes 5th and 7th will meet ( I assume) And, if things were not going to be messed up enough, there will be metal detectors this week also apparently. You might bring your textbook Tuesday and knock out that homework assignment????
Ø All of the grades that you completed while I was out with the flu will be 4th six weeks. If you were out last week for any one of a hundred reasons (robotics, Model UN, Choir etc) you have make up work due.
Ø You have a weekend quia.com quiz with a little extra credit potential (see Friday) Let's face it, some of you could use all the extra credit that you can get!
MONDAY and WEDNESDAY
· Discuss the events of the 1930s in US foreign policy (POL-2), (WOR-2,3)
· Explain the origins of WWII in Europe and Asia (POL-2), (WOR-2,3)
Materials Strategy/Format
PPT/video(afternoon classes Tuesday) lecture and discussion, doc analysis L.CCR.2-3
Student Activities
1. Chronological Reasoning (1,3)
3. Critical Thinking (6,7)
4. Interpretation and Synthesis (8)
Introduction
· Today we will start our Unit on WWII and the post war 1940s Period. There will be a small section included on the culture of the 1930s since we left that out of the previous unit. And while this might sound out of place, it truly isn’t. The 1930s Depression-era culture blended into the war years. The films and music often times focused on escapism for the Depression and was substituted with patriotism during the war years. The web notes will have to be the major focus of these notes as class time is getting scarce. A large portion of the notes on culture of the period will come from the website Digitalhistory.com (a University of Houston contribution).
· Last week when we finished off our discussion of the Depression and New Deal we saw that the years 1938 -1939 were probably the end of the greatest economic downturn in our history. Regrettably the worst war in global history played a major part in the change.
· Also, since this unit will focus predominately upon foreign policy and WWII some background discussion is in order because some of the first signs of trouble really started in the late 1920s and early 1930s. We will divide this into a focus upon relations in Asia and then in Europe.
US relations with Japan
· Were there already pre-conditions for tensions between the US and Japan? Absolutely! The first sign of some of these tensions as you will recall related to racism in California against Japanese immigrants. This resulted in the “gentleman’s agreement” between TR and the Japanese emperor to limit immigration to the U.S. The in 1905 TR brokered the Treaty of Portsmouth ending the Russo-Japanese War. This stopped the Japanese short of gaining full control of Manchuria in China. They saw the U.S. as a major obstacle to their imperial aims and the U.S. began to see them as potential aggressors.
· In September 1931 Japan invaded Manchuria. This created immediate tensions because the U.S. had good relations with China which was now a republican government led by Dr. Sun yet-Sin. Japan was becoming increasingly crowded due to its limited size as a nation and its rapidly increasing population. Manchuria offered nearly 200,000 square kilometers which, as part of a Japanese empire, would easily accommodate surplus population. The Japanese people had a very low opinion of the Chinese - and, therefore, would have given no thought to the Manchurian people whatsoever. It was also believed in Japan that Manchuria was rich in minerals, forestry and rich agricultural land. With the problems that Japan was experiencing at home, Manchuria seemed an obvious solution to these problems. An explosion on a section of the South Manchuria Railway, gave the army the excuse it needed to blame the local population of sabotage and to occupy the nearest Manchurian town of Shenyang. The League of Nations at China’s request immediately ordered the Japanese army to withdraw. Japan’s delegates at the League’s headquarters in Geneva, agreed to this demand and blamed the event on the army. To some degree this was true because already a militarist faction was weakening the democratic government of Japan.
· President Hoover and Secretary of State Henry Stimson, decided against an immediate American response, but Japan's successful campaign in the following months to seize all of Manchuria worried Stimson. The question was how the United States and the world community would respond to the flagrant violations of Chinese sovereignty and the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1929 (of which Japan was a signatory) that renounced war as an "instrument of national policy." In November 1931, the League of Nations passed a resolution demanding that Japan withdraw from Chinese territory. Japan, however, ignored the treaty. The President, fearful that the United States might become embroiled in a military conflict in Asia, wanted to reduce the nation's profile there. His most hawkish proposal was to favor a policy of not recognizing Japanese territorial gains should Japan and China sign a peace treaty. Stimson understood Hoover's desire to avoid war and supported the non-recognition policy, but also privately considered the use of military action or economic sanctions. In January 1932, as Japanese forces occupied the southern Manchurian city of Chinchou, Stimson drafted a diplomatic note warning the Japanese that the United States would not accept any treaty resolving the Manchurian crisis which violated existing treaties such as the Kellogg-Briand Pact; in essence, Stimson's note, which came to be known as the Stimson Doctrine—even though President Hoover was its intellectual author—meant that the United States would not recognize Japan's territorial gains in Manchuria.
· The Stimson Doctrine failed to halt the Japanese, who soon laid siege to the city of Shanghai. Stimson grew frustrated that even this provocation failed to move Hoover to more decisive action, though the Secretary of State largely kept his thoughts private. Instead, Stimson, with Hoover's support, wrote a letter (subsequently released to the public) to Senator William Borah, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In it, he warned that continued Japanese aggression in Manchuria permitted the United States to abrogate the arms control agreements it had signed with Japan over the previous decade. Stimson also convinced Hoover that the letter not disavow the possibility of coercive action against the Japan
· By 1937 Japan invaded the rest of China and committed terrible acts of brutality against the people of Nanking and other major cities. FDR, still facing the Depression, decided upon a major embargo aviation fuel, oil, and scrap metals. This US embargo of key materials may have further emboldened the Japanese to strike elsewhere to secure needed resources. The Panay Incident was perhaps a sign of things to come. The American gunboat USS Panay, which patrolled the Yangtze River near Nanking (Nanjing), China, was used as a bomb shelter for foreign embassy staff during the Japanese bombing of the area. On December 12, 1937, Japanese warplanes suddenly and without provocation dive-bombed repeatedly the Panay and a British gunboat, both of which were moored in the river; the American vessel was sunk, and the British one severely damaged. The US public was outraged by this attack, which caused two deaths and 48 casualties. Claiming its pilots had not seen the US flags painted on the Panay's decks and sides, Japan apologized and paid the indemnity demanded by the United States.
US Relations in Europe: The Origins of Fascism
· Benito Mussolini's Italy posed another threat to world peace. Mussolini, Italy's ruler from 1922 to 1943, promised to restore his country's martial glory. Surrounded by storm troopers dressed in black shirts, Mussolini delivered impassioned speeches from balconies, while crowds chanted, "Duce! Duce!"
· Mussolini invented the political philosophy known as fascism, extolling it as an alternative to socialist radicalism and parliamentary gridlock. Fascism, he promised, would end political corruption and labor strife while maintaining capitalism and private property. It would make trains run on time. Like Hitler's Germany, fascist Italy adopted anti-Semitic laws banning marriages between Christian and Jewish Italians, restricting Jews' right to own property, and removing Jews from positions in government, education, and banking. One of Mussolini's goals was to create an Italian empire in North Africa. In 1912 and 1913, Italy had conquered Libya. In 1935, he provoked war with Ethiopia, conquering the country in eight months. The only reaction by the League of Nations was economic sanctions, and we have seen in our own time how limited these can be.
· Hoover often spoke of the belief that the Great Depression actually had its origins in European debt structure. As such he sponsored a Moratorium on debts in 1931. This allowed Germany to match its reparation payments to Britain and France to the amount that they owed the U.S. This allowed all three countries to approach an end to their debt problems. One wonders if this had been accomplished sooner that German history might have proceeded away from a future with Hitler?
· Despite the creation of the Dawes Plan in the 1925 which reduced German debt payments with a loan from the U.S., Germany still sank into political and economic quagmire. One of the new political parties that challenged the corrupt Weimar Republic were the National Socialists or Nazis. In 1928, the Nazis polled just 810,000 votes in German elections; however, in 1930 after the Depression began, they polled 6 ½ million votes. Two years later, Hitler ran for president; he lost, but received 13 ½ million votes--37 percent of all votes cast. The Nazis had suddenly become the single largest party in the German parliament. In January 1933, Germany's president named Hitler chancellor. A year and a half later Hitler was Germany's dictator capitalizing on a provision called the Enabling Act, a measure that allowed the government sweeping powers in a time of emergency. Hitler provided this by having the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament set on fire and blamed a Jewish communist for the arson. The Enabling Act was invoked and martial law declared.
· Within months of becoming chancellor, Hitler's government outlawed labor unions, imposed newspaper censorship, and decreed that the Nazis would constitute Germany's only political party. The regime established a secret police force, the Gestapo, to suppress all opposition and required all children, 10 years and older, to join youth organizations designed to inculcate Nazi beliefs. By 1935, Hitler had transformed Germany into a fascist state. The government exercised total control over all political, economic, and cultural activities.
· Anti-Semitism was an integral part of Hitler's political program. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws forbade intermarriages, restricted property rights, and barred Jews from the civil service, the universities, and all professional and managerial occupations. On the night of November 9, 1939--a night now known as Kristallnacht (the night of the broken glass)--the Nazis imprisoned more than 20,000 Jews in concentration camps and destroyed more than 200 synagogues and 7,500 Jewish businesses.
· The FDR administration understood the threat in Europe of fascism but could do little about it. The U.S. depression was focus of attention and isolationism very high. The Nye Committee was established on April 12, 1934 because of continuing public disillusionment over the final outcome of World War I and distrust of those who had profited from the war. These weapons’ suppliers had reaped enormous profits at the cost of more than 53,000 American battle deaths. As local conflicts reignited in Europe through the early 1930s, suggesting the possibility of a second world war, concern spread that these “merchants of death” would again drag the United States into a struggle that was none of its business. Although World War I had been over for 16 years, the inquiry promised to reopen an intense debate about whether the nation should ever have gotten involved in that costly conflict.
· The Spanish Civil War was a major turning point both in European History and America’s renewed interest in foreign affairs. The Spanish Civil War (1936-39), was a coup d’etat against the Republican government of Spain, supported by conservative elements within the country. When an initial military coup failed to win control of the entire country, a bloody civil war ensued, fought with great ferocity on both sides. The Nationalists, as the rebels were called, received aid from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The Republicans received aid from the Soviet Union, as well as from International Brigades, a great number of volunteers who came from other European countries and the United States (The Washington and Lincoln Brigades)
· The Spanish Civil War created a battle between isolationists and internationalists in the U.S. The Quarantine Speech was given by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt on October 5, 1937, in Chicago, calling for an international "quarantine of the aggressor nations" as an alternative to the political climate of American neutrality and non-intervention that was prevalent at the time. The speech intensified America's isolationist mood, causing protest by non-interventionists and foes to intervention. No countries were directly mentioned in the speech, but it was interpreted as referring to Japan, Italy, and Germany. Roosevelt suggested the use of economic pressure, a forceful response, but less direct than outright aggression.
The Start of Another Global War and American Reaction
· The Spanish Civil War(1936-39), was a military revolt against the Republican government of Spain, supported by conservative elements within the country. When an initial military coup failed to win control of the entire country, a bloody civil war ensued, fought with great ferocity on both sides. The Nationalists, as the rebels were called, received aid from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The Republicans received aid from the Soviet Union, as well as from International Brigades, a great number of volunteers who came from other European countries and the United States. This created a major problem for the FDR administration. Young idealistic Americans wanted to help fight fascism but, would this be recognized as direct involvement?