Origins of WWII

• Germany unstable after war: Weak Weimar Republic, Economic problems ("hyperinflation" & reparations), Political problems (2 extremes: nazi & communist).
• Growing appeal of Fascism: 1. promised to punish responsible parties 2. promised to restore glory 3. it made sense/lacked democracy experience 4. promised to quickly repare problems.
• Rise of Mussolini: 1. Italy suffered high unemployment/inflation 2. Feared communism (destroy religion & gov.) 3. King o.k.'d him
• Rise of Hitler *see his notecard*

Adolf Hitler's rise/role in
instigating WWII

1. Promised to quickly solve economic problems.
2. Promised to tear up Treaty of Versailles -->
   rearm German, unite w/Austria, reoccupy Rhineland
3. Promised to obtain Lebenstraum (living space) ->
   attack Poland & Russia, Germany NEEDED space
4. Promised to punish Germany's enemies:
   Jews & Communists
5. Promised to create a newer/stronger Germany:
   3rd Reich would last 1000 years

"blitzkrieg"

German's "lightning war" on Poland

1 September 1939

used tanks, planes, trucks & artillery to hit Poland hard and fast

-April 1940 Germans took Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands, France) 

     * "Phony War" or sitzkrieg ("sitting war") autumn 1939

European Events that Lead to WWII

1. Italy invades Ethiopia 1935: to rebuild Roman Empire

2. Germany rebuilds military: League of Nations doesn't stop

3. Germany remilitarizes Rhineland 1936 a hostile act to disturb peace

4. Rome/Berlin/Tokyo (axis) Alliance 1936

5. German-Austrian Anschluss (union): violated Treaty of Versailles

6. Munich Conference Sept 1938 - (a) Hitler demands Sudentenland from Czechoslvk. (b) Britain & France use appeasement to avoid war

7. Hitler TAKES remainder of Czechoslavakia, March 1939

8. Germany & Soviet Union sign Non-agression Pact 1939:
    Divide Poland, Soviets get Finland, Germany & Russia will NOT fight

America's Isolationist Policy

• does not get involved in world's problems
• battling the Great Depression at home
• instated neutrality acts: forbade sale of arms and munitions to all belligerents (warring nations), forbade loans to and travel on belligerent ships.
• "cash & carry" - nations purchase goods with cash and transport cargo on their own ships.
• Stayed out of Spanish Civil war (fascist/democracy)

Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

7 December 1941

a.             response to US decision to cut off oil and scrap iron shipments to Japan

b.             goal was to destroy US Pacific Fleet: included the aircraft carriers

c.          US declares war on Japan and Germany.

* ended US isolationism & economic depression.

The Battle of the Coral Sea

7-8 May 1942 

• American forces finally halted the Japanese advance toward Australia.
• Stopped a fleet convoying Japanese troop transports toward New Guinea.
• Planes from Lexington & Yorktown.
• American losses were greater, but thwarted Japanese plans.

The Battle of Midway

June 1942

• US cracked Japanese code and knew their plan.
• determined that aircraft carriers were teh decisive elements of modern naval warfare.
• US attacked Japanese ships while their planes were away and scored much larger victory over a much larger Japanese force.
• Turning Point of the Pacific war.

Mobilization at Home

• required full employment & productive capacity
• 1942: US ordered 60K planes, 45K tanks
• Draft: 1.4mill by 1941, 15mill during course of war
• Military service to last 6 months after war's end
• Less than half servicemen finished High School
• War Production Board - converted manufacturing to war production, penalties for failure to comply.
• Gov. spending: 10x WWI, 100x Civil War
• labor & product shortages-> price ceilings & rations
• Development of the West: new jobs higher wages
• Changed status of women: demand for workforce

African Americans in WWII

• 1940 decision 2 integrate officer-candidate schools
• demanded =ity in armed forces & defense industry
• 1mill AfAm's served in segregated units.
• Philip Randolph, Pres. of Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters - called off march in return for exec. order prohibiting racial discrimination in Co.'s that received Federal defense contracts.
• Smith vs Allwright 1944: greater political participation, no all-white primaries b/c 15 ammnd.
• Fair Employment Practices Commission: sought to eliminate racial descrimination in jobs: little power, but huge civil rights step.

Latinos in the Labor Force

• Bracero Progam 1942: Mexico agreed to provide seasonal farmworkers in exchange for a promise not to draft them into military service. Offered fair wages and transportation.
• recruited previously deportd Mexicans to work crops
• 200k Mexican farmworkes entered Western US on year long contracts, = # crossed border unknown.
• Zoot-Suit Riot: 1943 off-duty servicemen rampaged L.A. assaulting Latinos, AfAm's, and Filipinos.

Native Americans and the War Effort

• Indians supported war more fully than any others.
• 1/3 served in armed forces, 1/4 in defense industry
• Indian women volunteered as nurses & WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service)
• served b/c: Mobilization ended New Deal programs that provided Indians with jobs, genuine patriotism and Nazi & Japanese Warlord threats to home.
• Indians were integrated into regular units.
• "code talkers" - most distinctive activity, used Indians to encode & decipher msgs in native lang.

Internment of Japanese Americans

• FDR Executive Order 9066, 19 Feb. 1942: removal and confinement of Japanese Americans. 60% were US citizens, 1/3 under age 19.
• 100k internees lost liberty and property/businesses
• War Relocation Camps - held JapAm's from '42-'45
• "Nisei" - Jap-Am's, literally "second-generation"
• 1988 Congress gave $20k apology to 60k living former internees.

D-Day

 (Operation Overlord)

6 June 1944

• Allies launched invasion of Europe (Normandy, FR)
• Success, but almost failed.
• "Beginning of the End for Germans"
• Cross-Channel assault on Hitler's "Atlantic Wall"
• Led German officers to belive war was hopeless, tried to kill Hitler 20 July 1944 in a Fuhrer, but he survived and tortured/killed 100's of conspirators.
• 30 April 1945 Hitler commits suicide when Soviet's surround Berlin.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower

General who led Operation Overlord to victory in WWII and eventually became President 1953.

Yalta and the Postwar World

4-11 Feb. 1945

FDR, Churchill, Stalin meet at Crimean Resort to discuss postwar world.

Stalin claimed large areas in Eastern Europe for Soviet domination.

Established The United Nations:
U.S., Britain, Soviet Union, France, China

The Atomic Bomb

• 1939 Albert Einstein alerted President a/b German nuclear fission research.
• 1940 Manhattan Project($2billion secret program)in Los Alamos, NM
  120k scientists/techs led by Robert Openheimer
• 16 July 1945 first atomic fireball
• Enola Gay bomber dropped "Little Boy".
  - decimated Hiroshima b/c Japan did not surrender. killed 140k and 70k buildings destroyed.

V-E Day

8 May 1945

WWII officially ended in Europe

Germany signs unconditional surrender

 Truman Doctrine

• program of Post WWII aid to European countries - particularly Greece and Turkey in danger of being undermined by communism.
• immediate gains created long term problems.
• Marked beginning of "cold war"
• ideological struggle b/t East & West for world power & influence.

Marshall Plan

• U.S. program for the reconstruction for Post WWII Europe through massive aid to former enemy nations as well as allies.
• Proposed by General George Marshall 1947
• $13 billion to promote European recovery.
• Czech Communist coup d'etat assured congressional passage of Marshall Plan.

Dividing Germany

• 1948 British, French & U.S. merged "West Germany," federal constitutional convention
• Soviet resentment of Marshall Plan led Soviets to restrict road & rail traffic into West Berlin, & cut off electricity.
• "airlift" by Allies to supply West w/needs.
• Soviets lifted blockade 12 May 1949.
• West - Federal Republic independent of
  East - Democratic Republic

Building NATO

(North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

• Defensive alliance founded 1949 by 10 western European nations, U.S., and Canada to deter Soviet expansion in Europe.
• an attack against any member = attack against all
• 1952 Greece & Turkey joined
• 1955 West Germany joined
• 1982 Spain joined
• Warsaw Treaty Organization: Eastern European counterpoint to NATO.

John F. Kennedy

• A young Democrat who defeated Richard Nixon to win the presidency in 1960 who focused his efforts on liberal reform and furthering civil rights until his tragic assassination in 1963.

The Warren Court

• The U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren, 1953-69, decided such landmark cases as Brown v. Board of Education (school desegregation), Baker v. Carr (legislative redistricting), and Gideon v. Wainwright and Miranda v. Arizona (rights of criminal defendants, attorneys)

March on Washington
28 August 1963

Cuban Missle Crisis

J.F. Kennedy
democrat

• Housing Act for urban renewal
• increased minimum wage
• enhanced Social Security benefits
• Peace Corps for underdeveloped countries
• Astonaut programs
• Alliance for Progress: Foreign-aid programs to help Latin American nations.
• 1964 Tax-Reduction bill for econ. growth (passed after his death)
• Trade Expansion Act 1962 - tariff cuts 35%

Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society

• promised more than he could accomplish, raising false hopes & resentments.
• Revenue Act 1964 - tax cut gave econ boost
• Civil Rights Act 1964 - prohibited racial segregation in public facilities, outlawed discrimination in voter registration & hiring employees.
• "War on Poverty" - Job Corps, Head Start program, work-study student programs, grants to farmers, loans to employers to hire un-employed, Volunteers in Service to America, Community Action Program - Funded by econ. growth from tax cut.
• end poverty and racial injustice.

Kennedy and Vietnam

• admitted 16k "advisers" to South Vietnam by 1963, none officially committed to battle
• Buddhist demonstrations against Diem regime
• did NOT stop dissident Vietnemes Generals from coup d'etat, Nov. 1, 1963 killed Diem.
• No stability.
• Never knew outcome b/c Kennedy shot by Lee Harvey Oswald Nov. 22. who was then assassinated by Jack Ruby.

Election of 1964

Lyndon Johnson (TX Democrat) vs. Barry Goldwater (AZ Republican Right)

Landslide election.

Black Power

• Post-1966 rallying cry of a more militant civil rights movement.
• SNCC ousted whites from organization.
• Malcolm X - spokesman, Black Muslim who rejected Christianity as "religion of white devils", encouraged black culture & pride. assasinated 1965 right when he began to preach a biracial msg of social change.

Youth Revolt

• mid 60's revolt across the country in 2 movements: New Left & Counterculture
• students wary of "military-industrial" complex
• criticized U.S. Vietnam involvment, anti-government, corporations, & authority.

The New Left

• Radical youth protest movement of the 1960s, named by leader Tom Hayden to distinguish it from the Old (Marxist-Leninist) Left of the 1930s.
• SDS - Students for a Democratic Society who insisted individuals were being supressed by huge organizational structures (ie, gov., univ., corp.)
• Died in 1971 as grew violent and troops returned.
• 1968 Columbia demonstrations & Chicago democratic convention violence.

Counter Culture

• "Hippie" educated and affluent white youth culture of the 1960s, which rejected the values of the dominant culture in favor of illicit drugs, communes, free sex, and rock music.
• diminished by violence @ Altamont, CA

The Feminine Mystique (1963)
Betty Friedan

• leading founder of the women's org.NOW 1966.
• protest against the image of 'domestic bliss' that Friedman felt falsely portrayed women and housewives of the time.
• "comfortable concentration camp" of materialism, TV & gossip.

Hispanic Rights

• Chicano - inclusive label for all Mexican immigrants, Spanish Americans, Californios, and Tejanos.
• Ended Bracero program 1964

Cesar Chavez

• organized UFW (United Farm Workers) 1962, union for Mexican-American migrant laborers in Southwest.
• gained nat'l attn in 1965 strike grape farms.
• successfully bargained for increased wages & conditions improved 1970.
• 1975 CA bill required growers to bargain collectively with the elected representatives.
•  CSO (Community Service Org.) sought to educate and organize the migrant poor so they could become self-reliant.(left in 1962)

Native American Rights

• American Indian Mvmt (AIM): A militant Indian group founded in 1963, its leaders aimed to promote "red power" through protests and armed seizure of land.
• Sit-in at the Dept. of the Interior's (BIA) Bureau of Indian Affairs 1972, worst managed Federal Agency.
• Took copies of old treaties into courts as basis for restituation -> won settlements in Alaska, Mass., Maine.

Watergate

Jan. 1973

• John Sirica - Judge whose relentless prodding elicited the full details of the scandal from one of the accused.
• Senate Investigation Committe led by NC Samuel Erwin,
• Saturday Night Massacre - The time during the Watergate trial when President Nixon ordered Harvard law professor Archibald Cox fired. Attorney-General Richardson and Deputy Attorney-General Ruckelshaus resigned rather than execute his order.
• Robbing of Democratic National Committee's headquarters, Nixon coverup.
• Led to FIRST Pres. Resignation Aug. 1974

Roots of Rebellion

• inspired by traumatic events of 1968: MLK Jr. assassination, robert Kennedy shot by Palestinian.
• baby boom
• containment doctrine of anti-communism
• susperficial focus on consumer culture