My late WW2 Questions
thom...@hotmail.com
(started new thread so they'd be noticed...)
1. The broadcast of the war of the worlds caused many Americans to
panic about the fictional invasion. This showed that radio's power
lay in the trust people placed in it and in its massive reach to most
American homes. It also showed that the American people were nervous
about some external force invading their lives.
2. Roosevelt used two programs to circumvent the neutrality laws. Cash
and carry made belligerents pay for their arms and required them to
ship them on their own vessels. Lend-Lease basically made the arms a
free gift and involved American shipping. Both programs squeaked
through loopholes and certainly conflicted with the spirit of the
neutrality acts.
3. One faction wanted America to stay out of the war, apart from
selling arms just to make a profit. Another wanted programs like
lend-lease to support the allies. A small faction supported direct
American involvement.
4. The Lend-Lease program allowed any nation that the President
"deemed vital to national security" to receive weapons for free
under the vague assumption that they'd pay later. This basically
allowed Roosevelt to give supplies to Britain and later Russia. The
national debate was over whether this was the right course to take
given the large segment of America that supported neutrality.
5. The American armed forces were pathetically small (apart from the
Navy) in 1939. To correct this deficiency, Roosevelt and Congress
instituted a draft and stepped up war production. By the time America
actually entered the war, it was already partially on a war footing.
6. The Atlantic Charter was important because it confirmed the
Allies' commitment to winning the war. In addition, it solidified the
philosophical basis for the war effort and laid down what the Allies
were fighting for. It later served as the basis for the formation of
the United Nations.
7. The Lend-Lease program put American merchant ships in the Atlantic
war zone. The American navy began to help the British navy guard the
convoys across the Western half of the Atlantic. Skirmishes between
U.S. destroyers and U-boats started a de facto state of war between
Germany and America in the Atlantic.
8. Oil was a big cause of contention between America and Japan because
Japan needed external sources of oil to support its military. America
embargoed oil shipments to Japan, which left them with the choice of
giving in to American demands or taking the oil by force. Since the
Americans demanded that the Japanese withdraw from China (which they
were unwilling to do), they decided to go to war.
9. Despite the tensions between the two countries, American
intelligence could not predict the exact time and place of the Japanese
strike. A misplaced feeling of superiority over the Japanese race and
the assumption that Pearl Harbor was unassailable contributed to the
surprise achieved by the Japanese strike force. Also, at the time it
was customary for nations to declare war before taking significant
military action, which made a surprise attack seem less likely.
10. The Japanese attack, because the declaration of war came
afterwards, was seen as sneaky and cowardly by most Americans. This
attack eradicated at a stroke the isolationist movement and unified
America behind the President and the war. Congress virtually
unanimously declared war on Japan and Germany declared war on America
shortly thereafter.
11. The Japanese won a tactical victory at Pearl in terms of ships and
airplanes destroyed. However, it committed them to a struggle that a
unified America was almost sure to win in the end. Historians generally
agree with Japanese Admiral Yamamoto's comment that they had
"awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve."
12. The American West most benefited from the government's war
expenditures, because they went from a rural, subsidiary economy to a
more industrial and important level of existence in comparison to the
East.
13. The war was an absolute priority for the American economy, so
strikes had to wait for after the war. On the other hand, employers
were forced to make concessions to the unions by the government. In
general, this time period saw a leveling of the playing field between
government and labor.
14. The government established a board to control the economy centrally
during the war. They also froze prices and forbade striking, and
generally tried to make war production the only thing that happened.
The war production board was not as powerful as its WWI predecessor,
but the governmental measure were still more or less effective.
15. Science and technology gave the Allies the edge over the Axis in
certain crucial areas, such as code breaking and antisubmarine warfare.
The Axis technology contributed less to their war effort because they
wasted a lot of effort on useless gadgets like ballistic missiles
(ineffective without nuclear warheads). Many peacetime advances were
based on wartime research, like nuclear power and the space programs of
the US and USSR.
16. Although the U.S. was at least nominally fighting for democracy in
WW2, it had a segregated military. This is simply because the U.S. was
not a perfect democracy and blacks were still oppressed. Also, winning
the war with existing methods took precedence over social
experimentation.
17. African-Americans distinguished themselves in WW2, often to make a
social or political point about the equality of their race. One example
is the Tuskegee Airmen, who were one of the best fighter groups in the
American Air Force. Another example is the 761st Tank Battalion, which
played an important role in stopping the last-ditch German offensive
during the Battle of the Bulge.
18. During WW2, blacks took many factory jobs that the combination of
war demands and white absence created. Mexicans on the West Coast faced
harassment for their cultural differences (e.g. zoot suit riots). After
WW2, the military was finally desegregated, which was a big step for
American minorities.
19. The war was an absolute priority for the American economy, so
strikes had to wait for after the war. On the other hand, employers
were forced to make concessions to the unions by the government. In
general, this time period saw a leveling of the playing field between
government and labor.
20. The Atlantic Charter was important because it confirmed the
Allies' commitment to winning the war. In addition, it solidified the
philosophical basis for the war effort and laid down what the Allies
were fighting for. It later served as the basis for the formation of
the United Nations.
21. D-Day was when the Second Front in Western Europe was reopened
against Hitler. The Allied armies landed in France, which signaled the
beginning of the end of Hitler's Germany. Within a year, Germany
surrendered because it was crushed between the Western and Eastern
fronts.
22. During the war, women were treated more equally and allowed to take
industrial jobs, simply because the war effort demanded it. This
foreshadowed the later successes of the feminist movement.
23. One faction wanted America to stay out of the war, apart from
selling arms just to make a profit. Another wanted programs like
lend-lease to support the allies. A small faction supported direct
American involvement.
24. Oil was a big cause of contention between America and Japan because
Japan needed external sources of oil to support its military. America
embargoed oil shipments to Japan, which left them with the choice of
giving in to American demands or taking the oil by force. Since the
Americans demanded that the Japanese withdraw from China (which they
were unwilling to do), they decided to go to war.
25. During the war, the prevalent American attitude towards the
Japanese people was a racist one. This paved the way for considering
all Japanese-Americans security risks, because of a perceived greater
loyalty to their homeland. The justification for the deportation of the
Japanese-Americans to internment camps was that they could not be
trusted with the security of America.
26. Japanese-Americans suffered more than German-Americans because of
racism. The American people generally didn't have a problem with
Germany itself, and saw themselves as fighting the Nazis. However,
Americans had racial contempt for the Japanese people as a whole and
didn't treat them as well as a result.
27. The key issue of Korematsu vs. US was whether loyal citizens could
be deported solely on the basis of race. The Supreme Court ruled that
there was no question as to the loyalty of the Japanese-Americans in
question but that they had to follow the law, which they said was a
military necessity.
28. D-Day was when the Second Front in Western Europe was reopened
against Hitler. The Allied armies landed in France, which signaled the
beginning of the end of Hitler's Germany. Within a year, Germany
surrendered because it was crushed between the Western and Eastern
fronts.
29. Late-war Allied bombing raids were supposedly against military
targets, but in fact simply leveled enemy cities. This has generated a
lot of controversy, both as to the moral justification and military
effectiveness of this effort. Many hundreds of thousands of civilians
were killed, and the contribution that this made to the victory is
questionable.
30. Germany collapsed due to several factors. Its army had suffered
massive losses and was no longer capable of holding on two fronts.
Germany was massively out produced and outnumbered, and was overwhelmed
by the Allied armies. Its cities and economy were badly damaged by
allied bombing, and the German armed forces no longer had enough fuel
to conduct modern warfare. Eventually Germany surrendered after
Hitler's suicide.
31. The Atlantic Charter was important because it confirmed the
Allies' commitment to winning the war. In addition, it solidified the
philosophical basis for the war effort and laid down what the Allies
were fighting for. It later served as the basis for the formation of
the United Nations.
32. The Allied strategy in the Pacific was island-hopping, which meant
moving along island chains, capturing only strategically important
islands, towards Japan. Once they had bases in range of Japan, a tight
naval blockade and devastating firebombing raids crippled the Japanese
economy, precluding any military action by the Japanese armed forces
except a last stand against an invasion. Eventually nuclear attacks
delivered the knockout punch and Japan surrendered.
33. US colleges and universities operated as military research
facilities during WW2. They handled cutting-edge theoretical science
with direct military applications, such as nuclear technology, radar,
and aerodynamics. The Manhattan Project is a good example of the
universities helping the military to develop crucial weapons
technologies.
34. Oppenheimer's comment, "I am become Death, the destroyer of
worlds," was from the Bhagavad Gita, or Hindu holy book. It refers to
one of the forms of the god Vishnu. Its symbolic meaning is that they
have unleashed a godlike power that could destroy the world, but that
in another form can have a positive effect.
35. The decision to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a controversial one.
The obvious benefit was that it ended the war, and also possibly had an
effect on Stalin. The downside is obviously that several hundred
thousand civilians were horribly killed.