World War II History Articles
Learn how war broke out (again) and discover how the war era transformed history, culture, and politics — permanently.
Articles From World War II History
Filter Results
Article / Updated 12-02-2022
Japan's ambassadors delivered the first part of a final Japanese diplomatic note to U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull on December 6, 1941. On the morning of December 7, the final portion of the note arrived from Tokyo to the Japanese ambassadors. The note broke diplomatic relations with the U.S. and provided instructions to destroy the code machines in the Japanese embassy. The ambassadors were to deliver the note in the early afternoon. While the Japanese ambassadors received this information, so too did American intelligence. Everyone understood the note's meaning: War was to be declared that afternoon. Soon after receiving the note, warnings were sent to American commanders in Hawaii, the Philippines, Panama, and San Francisco with the information that the ultimatum would be delivered at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Separate messages were sent to the United States army and navy. Somehow, the alert messages bound for Hawaii ended up being transmitted by commercial telegraph and radio. A bicycle messenger, on his way from Honolulu to deliver the coded messages, found himself in the middle of a war. The attack on Pearl Harbor War came to America at 7:55 a.m. on a quiet Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The base on Oahu Island was the home of the United States Pacific Fleet and about 50,000 American troops. At Pearl Harbor was the largest concentration of U.S. forces in the Pacific. A fleet of six Japanese aircraft carriers and escort ships stationed itself 230 miles off Oahu and launched its first wave of 183 fighters, bombers, and torpedo planes. They were to inflict as much damage on the fleet as they could. They were to especially target the eight U.S. battleships and two U.S. carriers. They also sought to destroy aircraft parked on the ground. The first wave of Japanese bombers found plenty to attack. About 200 American ships and smaller craft were anchored in the harbor, and hundreds of warplanes were parked wingtip to wingtip at the airfields (planes arranged this way are easier to protect from sabotage). A second wave of 170 Japanese aircraft followed up and found the harbor obscured by giant columns of black smoke and antiaircraft fire. During this wave, the Japanese lost 19 aircraft from ground fire and American fighters that had managed to get into the air. The entire attack lasted only about an hour and fifty minutes. The effect at Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl Harbor killed 2,400 Americans and wounded another 1,200. Of those dead, 1,103 sailors and marines were killed when a Japanese bomb penetrated the forward magazine (the compartment where a ship's ammunition is stored) of the battleship USS Arizona, sinking the ship and the men aboard it. The USS Oklahoma, another battleship, was also sunk with heavy loss of life. The other six battleships were damaged, and so were a number of cruisers and destroyers. Over 340 of the 400 aircraft on Oahu were destroyed or damaged as well. In the short run, the Japanese accomplished their objective. They had knocked the United States Pacific Fleet out of action temporarily. But how temporarily was the most important issue. In the long run, the United States was able to overcome the damage at Pearl Harbor for the following reasons: The aircraft carriers weren't touched. The carrier would prove to be the decisive weapon of the naval war in the Pacific, not the battleship, which every naval strategist before 1941 thought would be the primary naval weapon. The submarines were not attacked. Submarines became one of America's most potent weapons in crippling Japan's vital supply lines. The repair dockyards and fuel-oil storage tanks were undamaged. Thus, Pearl Harbor was able to serve its important role in wartime as a repair and refitting base for the Pacific Fleet. In fact, most of the American ships damaged in the attack were repaired and entered action against the Japanese later in 1942 and 1943. Nevertheless, Pearl Harbor was a bitter defeat for the United States. American territory had been attacked, and American lives had been lost. Pearl Harbor unified the divided and uncertain American population as no earlier action could. The United States declares war on Japan Japan had underestimated the Americans, who they believed would prefer to negotiate rather than fight. To the contrary, America wanted revenge. Although deeply divided over war issues and neutrality before Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Congress was now united in seeking a declaration of war. As outlined in the United States Constitution, the president must ask Congress for such a declaration, which Roosevelt willingly did. In his message to Congress, Roosevelt captured the emotions of the day: "Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. . . . Always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory." British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had no doubt what Roosevelt's words meant for the British. "So we had won after all!" he wrote. "After seventeen months of lonely fighting and nineteen months of my responsibility in dire stress. We had won the war. England would live; Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire would live."
View ArticleCheat Sheet / Updated 04-15-2022
A number of people and events influenced the course and outcome of World War II. This helpful timeline of World War II (WWII) maps out those key figures and actions in the years surrounding the war.
View Cheat SheetArticle / Updated 03-26-2016
Officially, World War II began when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 and the French and English declared war against Germany as a result of that invasion. But the war's beginnings came long before this invasion. World War II was the product of a lot of things coming together in just the wrong way at just the wrong time. The World War I peace agreement When the Great War ended, the winners (Britain, France, the United States, and Italy) wanted the losers (Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire) to pay. Because the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires no longer existed, that left Germany to bear the brunt of the victors' vindictive peace agreement. Humiliated and broke, Germany began nursing a big-time grudge. The victors themselves weren't even happy with the outcome. Some (Italy) felt cheated; some (France) felt that Germany hadn't been punished enough, and some (the U.S.) just wanted the heck out of Dodge. In addition, the peace agreement created new nations (Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia) in Eastern Europe from the wrecked Austro-Hungarian Empire and other pieces of land from here (Germany) and there (the Soviet Union). Think that didn't tick everybody off? The global economy All the nations experienced financial troubles following World War I. The European nations (especially Germany, with the war debt hanging over its head) were practically destitute. Slowly, each made an economic recovery — just in time for the world economy to spiral downward. The U.S. stock market crashed in 1929, and the economies in Europe tanked pretty soon after that. Weakened by the war, no European nation was able to stop the economic downturn. And many saw the ruined economy as an indication that capitalism and democracy had failed. The rise of totalitarianism With the world in such a mess, folks looked toward their governments to solve their problems, and those countries without a strong tradition of democratic rule were susceptible to promises made by future tyrants who claimed that by consolidating power in one party and one man, they could provide stability and order. As a result, in Germany specifically (and in Italy earlier), the fledgling democracies gave way to dictatorships and eventual totalitarian rule (that is, all aspects of life are controlled by the dictator). In Italy, this dictator was Benito Mussolini; in Germany, it was Adolf Hitler. The birth of Fascism and Nazism Fascism is a political ideology in which the state is exalted above all else. All effort and resources are committed to glorifying the state. Individual freedom doesn't exist; there is only the freedom to serve the state. Fascists believe that people reach their potential only through service to their nation. If the nation is great, the people are great. And the best representation of the nation's greatness is through war. Italy was Fascist, as was Spain after the Spanish Civil War. Nazism is Fascism with a significant difference: the race issue. The Nazis believed that race is the fundamental trait and therefore the defining characteristic of a people. Just as dogs are genetically predisposed to certain roles (some hunt and others herd, for example), each race is genetically predisposed to certain roles. Some are leaders; other races (the "inferior" ones) are meant to be mastered. The Aryan race is, according to Nazis, the Master Race. Then, in descending order are, non-Aryan Caucasians, Asians, Africans, and finally Jews. The Jewish people occupied a special place at the bottom of the Nazi racial hierarchy for the following reasons: They "corrupted" the other inferior races and the weak minded of the Master Race with what Hitler thought of as Jewish ideas: equality among people and individual freedom. They wanted to take over the world and thus posed a specific threat to the Master Race who, as the Master Race, deserved to rule the world. They were "parasites" who betrayed Germany during World War I. The rise of Hitler There have always been tyrants and people who abused power, and in many ways, Hitler was no different than any other dictator. He consolidated power by eliminating anyone who could oppose him. He targeted and abused groups he didn't like. He used propaganda as a tool to lull the German people into believing that what he told them was true. In other ways, Hitler was different. He had the power of an industrialized nation behind him. He had the capability to export his policies all over Europe through diplomatic trickery and lies and then through war. He had the certainty of his fanatical vision of a Jew-free Europe. And, maybe most frightening of all, he had the ability to make the German people as a whole believe that, by following him down the path to hell, they were fulfilling their destiny for greatness. The British and French fear of another war The British and French, having just been through one horrific world war (although they didn't call it that at the time), were willing to do just about anything to make sure that they didn't find themselves in another horrific war. For both countries, this determination to avoid conflict resulted in their policy of appeasement. By giving in to the demands of aggressors, such as Hitler, they hoped to avert another crisis that would lead to war. Obviously, this strategy didn't work. The isolationism of the United States The United States, separated from Europe by an ocean, wanted to remain separated from Europe. Like the French and British, the Americans had seen enough of war. They learned as much about European politics and intrigue and blood feuds as they wanted to during the Great War, and they had no intention now of allowing themselves to get mixed up in that mess again. So they developed an isolationist policy and naively insisted that what went on in Europe — or anywhere else in the world, for that matter — was not their concern. The empire building of Japan Japan, long a key player in Asia, wanted to consolidate its power there. Japan still held the German bases that it had occupied in China during World War I, and as one of the victors, Japan got to keep large sections of Chinese territory that had once been controlled by the Germans, in addition to being given control of islands that had belonged to Germany. Japan also sought to increase its holdings in China, which, in addition to being a problem for the Chinese, was also a problem for the United States, who had interests there, too.
View ArticleArticle / Updated 03-26-2016
The admirals in both the American and Japanese navies had grown up believing that the decisive naval action in the Pacific would be one straight out of the age of sail — two big battle fleets fighting within sight of each other, with the heavily armored and armed battleship providing the decisive edge. For nearly a generation, the war plans of both nations had envisaged such an engagement — that's why both Japan and the United States built big battleships and why the disarmament efforts of the 1920s focused on reducing the size and number of battleships in the world's fleets. But the sinking of the British battleship Prince of Wales by Japanese aircraft and the Battle of the Coral Sea had proven that the future of naval warfare lay in the hands of the naval aviator, not the battleship captain. If the Battle of the Coral Sea taught anyone anything, it was that the age of the battleship was over. Whichever side figured this out first would win the war in the Pacific. Setting a trap: The Japanese three-pronged approach Japanese Admiral Yamamoto sought to take Midway, the last American base in the Pacific outside of Hawaii. Not only would possession of Midway expand the Japanese defensive zone, but it would also force the Americans, who couldn't afford to lose the island, to react. Yamamoto expected the Americans to respond by bringing out their carriers to stop the Japanese or by trying to retake the island. As a result, Yamamoto assembled the largest battle fleet ever used in the Pacific Ocean — 160 ships (eight of them aircraft carriers) and 400 aircraft. This massive fleet would wait until the Americans approached Midway, and then the Japanese carrier aircraft and giant battleships would finish off the Americans once and for all. In his plan, Yamamoto divided up the fleet into four forces: One force would conduct an attack on the Aleutian Islands to divert American attention from the Midway attack. Yamamoto himself would command the main Japanese battle fleet in the climactic battle against the American fleet. A third fleet would bring in the amphibious landing force to capture Midway. A screen of submarines would search the waters between Pearl Harbor and Midway to scout for signs of the American fleet. Having two aces in the hole: The Nimitz shuffle Japanese Admiral Yamamoto's plan was good, but American Admiral Nimitz had the upper hand, at least initially: He knew the Japanese plan. Again, intercepted Japanese codes had given him a detailed understanding of the Japanese plan and plenty of time to prepare a counterplan for Midway. Nimitz also learned that the Japanese had spread out their fleet into widely scattered small groups to avoid detection. Nimitz decided that no giant naval engagement off Midway would occur, as Yamamoto expected. He also realized that his battleships would be no help to him. The advantage was the aircraft carriers, which could strike targets from long distances. Nimitz would rely on surprise and the skill of his naval aviators to offset the Japanese strength in numbers. He had more carriers than the Japanese realized. In addition to two U.S. carriers that the Japanese knew about, Nimitz also had one — the USS Yorktown — the Japanese thought they sank in the Coral Sea battle. Despite the extensive damage to the ship, which would take three months to repair, crews at Pearl Harbor accomplished nothing short of a miracle by making it battle worthy again in only 72 hours. But even with these advantages, the Americans still didn't have the upper hand. Yamamoto had superior numbers and lots of ocean to hide in. Nimitz would commit all the American carriers, 12 cruisers, 14 destroyers, and 19 submarines to this battle — a laughably small force to match the Japanese fleet headed for Midway. For the United States Navy, Midway was a gamble with enormous stakes. Opening moves: Bombs over Midway The Battle of Midway would be the decisive battle of the Pacific in World War II, and in the end, it would change both the course of the war and the future of naval warfare. First phase: June 3 On June 3, 1942, the Japanese began the first phase of the battle with air attacks on American bases in the Aleutians. Japanese forces landed on the Aleutian Islands of Kiska on June 6 and the following day, on Attu. Japanese aircraft conducted raids throughout the islands. Although Nimitz had dispatched a naval force to deal with the invasion, land-based aircraft kept the Japanese fleet at bay. To Yamamoto, it appeared that his Aleutian Island diversion had worked. But in reality, the American carrier fleet was heading for Midway — a fact that Yamamoto didn't know. Tipped off by the intercepts, Nimitz had dispatched his fleet days before the Japanese submarines were to arrive to search for the Americans. The Japanese were in the dark. To them, it appeared that all was going according to plan. Second phase: June 4 Yamamoto began the next phase of the battle with an attack on Midway on June 4. He sent half of his carrier aircraft against Midway, while he held the other half back in case the American fleet showed up. As the Japanese aircraft returned from the Midway strike, it became clear that another attack was necessary. As the Japanese armed the planes for another attack, Japanese Admiral Nagumo received disturbing news: One of Japan's spotter planes reported sighting enemy ships, possibly a carrier. By the time Nagumo became aware of the American ships, aircraft from the USS Hornet, Enterprise, and Yorktown were already on their way to attack the Japanese carriers. Nagumo took bombs off his planes and rearmed them with torpedoes to attack the most dangerous threat. Thus, at the moment American planes appeared, the Japanese carriers had more than 100 planes on the decks, fully fueled, with stacks of bombs and torpedoes sitting above and below the flight deck. American torpedo planes began their attack. The U.S. pilots of the slow moving torpedo planes kept on course and were rapidly shot down one after another by the Japanese fighters protecting the carriers. Those few that were able to launch torpedoes missed their target. The annihilation of the American torpedo planes meant that American carriers were in range of Nagumo's torpedo planes. In just a few more minutes, Nagumo would be able to launch his own attack against the Americans — these were a few minutes that he didn't have. Off the beaten path: McClusky's miracle American Lieutenant Commander Wade McClusky led 33 dive-bombers from the USS Enterprise in search of the Japanese carriers. McClusky's planes, getting low on fuel, would have to turn back soon. On a whim, McClusky flew off the prescribed track to look elsewhere. Minutes later, he found them. In fact, he found them just as the last of the torpedo planes had finished their fatal runs. All the Japanese fighters were close to the water, enabling McClusky's dive-bombers to come in without any interference. Dive-bombers from the USS Yorktown then appeared, and McClusky signaled for the attack. The result was devastating. Caught completely by surprise, without protection from their own aircraft, and with decks fully loaded with fuel and weapons, the Japanese carriers were sitting ducks. Within minutes, two carriers were completely engulfed in flames. Another carrier quickly followed. The last Japanese carrier was lucky: It avoided the air attack and launched its planes against the Yorktown, damaging it with bombs and torpedoes until the carrier was dead in the water, the Americans abandoning the ship. However, the rearmed and refueled American planes found the last Japanese carrier and destroyed it. Yamamoto tried to continue the fight with his battleships, but the Americans weren't interested in slugging it out. The American force withdrew, leaving the Japanese with no choice but to abandon the attack on Midway. One Japanese cruiser was lost in the air attack, and a Japanese submarine sunk an American destroyer and the abandoned hulk of the USS Yorktown. There were no further losses in the battle. The Americans lost 137 aircraft and 300 men, and the Japanese lost over 330 aircraft and 3,500 men, many of them highly skilled, experienced combat pilots. Midway: A Strategic Analysis The story of the Battle of Midway is essentially the clash between old and new methods of waging naval war. Japanese Admiral Yamamoto represented the old method of fighting naval battles. He wanted to engage the American fleet in a surface battle, using battleships. American Admiral Nimitz left his battleships behind and relied on a new style of naval warfare, in which ships didn't fight within sight of each other. Instead, aircraft, launched from the ships, would be the decisive factor. In the Battle of Midway, the new concept of warfare won out. The Americans had demonstrated their faith in the aircraft carrier, and Yamamoto, for all his belief in carriers, had packed most of his punch in battleships, which were essentially useless. The loss of four carriers and the fact that the U.S. was building more carriers than the Japanese (13 to 6, respectively) ended the Japanese hold on the Pacific.
View ArticleArticle / Updated 03-26-2016
The years after World War II weren't peaceful. But they didn't erupt into World War III either (cross your fingers). For much of the time after World War II, the major world powers were preoccupied with a game of nuclear standoff. The major powers, by the way, turned out to be the United States and the Soviet Union. The United States expected to enjoy its nuclear monopoly for 20 years or more, but the Soviets surprised everyone by developing their own atomic bomb in 1949. Allies on the winning side of World War II, the nations became bitter rivals very soon afterward. Soviet foreign policy, reflecting Josef Stalin's viciously paranoid behavior toward any rival — real or imagined, internal or abroad — became increasingly exclusionary and closed off. Soviet goals included maintaining control over satellite communist states, several set up in Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe in the wake of World War II, while keeping out foreign cultural and economic influences. The United States emerged as leader of the West — meaning western Europe, the Western Hemisphere, and developed nations anywhere that resisted communism and promoted (or at least permitted) the private pursuit of profit in their trade policies. Daring each other to blink With their nuclear arsenals, the Soviet Union and United States engaged in a Cold War. It amounted to a diplomatic, cultural, political, and military standoff. In diplomatic and military terms, the Cold War took the form of each side daring the other to fire the first nuclear shot. Both nations built more and more, bigger and bigger missiles and warheads. Missiles became capable of delivering a nuclear bomb from a Nebraska wheat field into downtown Moscow. Both nations developed the ludicrously tragic ability to blow up the Earth several times over. This madness was tempered a little with a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, numerous arms talks, and even arms reduction agreements, but the two nations basically kept their guns pointed at each other's heads until one, the economically ruined Soviet Union, blinked — or in this case, fell apart. Along the way, several other countries built nuclear arsenals — China prominent among them. Returning to arms Meanwhile, many regional wars raged. Among them, the United States was embarrassed in a futile attempt to keep Vietnam, a former French colony (and before that, a sometime Chinese vassal state) in Southeast Asia, from going communist. The Soviets squandered a lot of resources and international good will fighting Muslim rebels in Afghanistan. When Israel, a new Jewish state, was established in 1948 in what was British-ruled Palestine, surrounding Arab nations joined Palestinian Arabs in opposing it. The disagreement turned violent many times, with wars in 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982. Also in the region, Iraq fought Iran. Then Iraq invaded Kuwait and a U.S.-led international force turned it back. Horrible intertribal violence broke out in Africa. Terrorist bombings threaten people on every continent. Clearly, humanity has not come close to achieving a world without war.
View ArticleArticle / Updated 03-26-2016
Even before World War II began, scientists fleeing from Nazi Germany had warned U.S. officials the Germans were working on developing a huge new bomb that would be triggered through an atomic reaction. The U.S. government then began pouring what would amount to more than $2 billion into what would be called the “Manhattan Project.” It was name as such because it started in New York. Work continued at top-secret bases in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Los Alamos, New Mexico, under the direction of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. The project was so hush-hush that Vice President Harry Truman wasn’t told of it until he assumed the presidency after FDR’s death. On July 16, 1945, the world’s first atomic bomb was detonated at a testing ground in New Mexico. On July 26, 1945, Allied leaders delivered a surrender ultimatum to Japan, but it was rejected by that country’s military leaders. Then on August 6, 1945, a single B-29 bomber nicknamed “Enola Gay” dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The bomb killed 75,000 people and injured another 100,000 in the city of 340,000. Thousands more eventually died from the radiation. Debate has raged ever since as to whether Japan would have surrendered if the bomb had not been dropped. But at the time, there was little hesitation about its use on the part of the man who made the decision, President Truman. “I regarded the bomb as a military weapon,” he said later, “and never had any doubt that it should be used.” Japan was stunned by the destruction of the Hiroshima bomb, but its leaders hesitated in surrendering. Three days later, another A-bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The next day, Japan surrendered. The final ceremony took place on September 2, aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. World War II, the bloodiest and most devastating war in human history, was over. About 30 million civilians and military personnel around the world had been killed. American losses, compared to the other major combatant countries, had been light: About 300,000 were killed and another 750,000 were injured or wounded. But while the war was over, a new age, that included the threat of even more horrible wars, was just beginning. The dropping of the Atomic bomb forever changed how warfare would be conducted.
View ArticleArticle / Updated 03-26-2016
Many African Americans had hoped their service in World War I would help bring them equality in post-war America. But they were wrong. So when World War II started, some black leaders were wary. Ultimately, African Americans did gain some ground in the civil rights movement through their involvement with World War II “Our war is not against the Hitler in Europe,” editorialized one black newspaper, “but against the Hitlers in America.” Some black leaders demanded assurances that loyalty this time around would be rewarded with more decent treatment. In response, Roosevelt established the Fair Employment Practices Commission and charged it with investigating cases where African Americans were discriminated against in war industries. The commission enjoyed some success. But the real economic boost for blacks came from the labor shortage, which fueled the movement of many from the South to industrial cities in the North and West. About 700,000 African Americans also served in the military and some strides in equality were made. Blacks were admitted into the Air Force and Marines for the first time. The Air Force enlisted some 600 black pilots and the first African American general was appointed in the Army. Some military units were even integrated toward the end of the war, although it was more for practical reasons than to further civil rights. Even so, race relations remained mired in racism and distrust. Several cities had race riots, the worst of which was in Detroit in 1943, when 34 people died. Angry that the racism of Hitler was being fought against while the racism at home was largely ignored, many African Americans began taking a more active role in asserting their legal rights. The ranks of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) swelled from 50,000 before the war to more than 400,000 at war’s end.
View ArticleArticle / Updated 03-26-2016
Despite all the warnings of war, the United States wasn’t completely prepared when World War II broke out. The Depression had rubbed out many of the country’s machine and tool industries, the military was woefully under-supplied, and many soldiers found themselves drilling with toy guns and wooden tanks. In a way, however, the Depression was a good preparation for what was to come: Americans had learned to scrimp and persevere. And having been pushed into a fight, they were eager to oblige. Gearing up of the industry needed to wage a global war on two fronts was handicapped by a lack of manpower. More than 15 million Americans eventually served in the military. Training and supplying them was a staggering challenge. It took more than 6,000 people to provide food, equipment, medical services, and transportation to 8,000 soldiers. In addition, many raw materials, such as rubber, manila fiber, and oil, were in short supply. And to top it off, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was a great leader, but not a great administrator. Nevertheless, Americans rose to the occasion. When FDR called for the production of 50,000 planes in a year, it was thought to be ridiculous. By 1944, the country was producing 96,000 a year. Technology blossomed. When metals became scarce, plastics were developed to take their place. Copper was taken out of pennies and replaced with steel; nickel was removed from nickels. War-inspired pragmatism even affected fashions: To save material, men’s suits lost their pant cuffs and vests, and women painted their legs to take the place of nylons. Other sacrifices were made as well. Gasoline and tires were rationed, as were coffee, sugar, canned goods, butter, and shoes. But the war proved to be more of an economic inconvenience than a real trial for most people. Of course, all that military hardware had a hefty price tag. The federal government spent about $350 billion during World War II — or twice as much as it had spent in total for the entire history of the U.S. government up to that point. About 40 percent of that came from taxes; the rest came through government borrowing, much of that through the sale of bonds. All that money had to go someplace. A lot of it went to the West, especially California, where 10 percent of all the federal war spending took place. But the American economy rose just about everywhere else too. The civilian workforce grew 20 percent. The Gross National Product (the total of goods and services produced) more than doubled between 1939 and 1945. Wages and corporate profits went up, as did prices. In October 1942, Congress gave the president the power to freeze agricultural prices, wages, salaries, and rents. The Roosevelt Administration created the Office of Price Administration (OPA) to oversee prices and wages. But the OPA proved generally ineffective, and the economy mostly ran itself.
View ArticleArticle / Updated 03-26-2016
The attack on Pearl Harbor, prompted Japanese forces to expand their warpath to include most of the Pacific and forced U.S. troops to join World War II. Although the Japanese had early success in the Pacific, U.S troops quickly gained ground, conquering the Pacific and ultimately winning World War II overall. Within a few months after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese conquered much of the Pacific including Guam, Wake Island, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, Burma, and the Philippines. Drunk with victories, Japanese forces continued to expand their dominance in the Pacific during the first few months of World War II. About the only good news for the Allies came on April 18, 1942, when a squadron of B-25 bombers launched from an aircraft carrier and led by Colonel James Doolittle managed to bomb Tokyo. The planes did little damage and none of the planes made it back, with most of the crews having to ditch them in China. Still, Doolittle’s raid was a huge shot in the arm for sagging American morale. U.S. strategists decided to strike back on two fronts. The first, under General Douglas MacArthur, would move north from Australia, through New Guinea, and then back to the Philippines. The second, under Adm. Chester Nimitz, would move west from Hawaii and then hopscotch from island to island toward Japan itself. But first the Japanese offense had to be stopped. The initial halt came in early May 1942, at the Battle of the Coral Sea, northwest of Australia. It was the first naval fight in history where the fighting ships never actually saw each other: All the combat was done by planes from each side’s aircraft carriers. The battle was pretty much a draw, but the Japanese fleet carrying invasion troops to New Guinea had to turn back, marking the first time the Japanese had not won outright. The real turning point, however, came between June 3 and June 6, in a fierce naval battle near the U.S.-held Midway Island. Tipped to Japanese plans by intercepting their messages and breaking their codes, U.S. forces managed to sink four Japanese aircraft carriers, losing only one. The victory returned control of the central Pacific to the Allies. A few months after the Battle of Midway, the United States took the offensive in the Solomon Islands, winning battles at Gavutu, Tulagi, and Guadalcanal. It took six grueling months to take Guadalcanal, but by mid-1943, the Japanese forces were either retreating or on defense nearly everywhere. Now it was The Unites States's turn. In February 1944, forces under Nimitz won victories in the Marshall Islands, and in the fall, allied forces reopened supply lines in Southeast Asia into China. In mid-1944, a U.S. armada struck the Marianas Islands of Tinian, Guam, and Saipan, and on October 20, 1944, MacArthur made good on an earlier promise and returned to the Philippines. As the Germans did at the Battle of the Bulge, the Japanese threw everything they had into a counteroffensive. And, like the Germans, they lost. The Battle of Leyte Gulf cost Japan four more carriers and all but ended its ability to mount an offensive. Next came the battle for the island of Okinawa, just 370 miles south of Japan itself. The Japanese sent suicide planes called kamikazes (“divine wind”) on one-way trips into U.S. ships, and while they were horrifyingly effective, they weren’t enough. After 50,000 Allied and 100,000 Japanese were killed or wounded, Okinawa fell in late June 1945. U.S. submarines were taking a huge toll on Japanese supply lines, sinking more than half of all the enemy’s cargo ships by the end of the war. American planes, meanwhile, had been softening up the Japanese mainland. In May 1945, they dropped napalm on Tokyo, killing 80,000 people. The bombings were designed to make the eventual invasion of Japan easier. Even so, U.S. strategists figured it would take more than a year of fighting and more than 1 million American soldiers would be killed or wounded before the Japanese homeland would fall.
View ArticleArticle / Updated 03-26-2016
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) met with English Prime Minister Winston Churchill to decide how the forces of the Allies should take action against the Axis powers — Germany, Italy, and Japan — during World War II. By working together, the Allied forces were able to win World War II through coordinated actions and combined military forces. Allied forces strategy during World War II The most pressing threat, the Allieds decided in the beginning, was Hitler’s Germany. The German army seemed to be on the brink of defeating the Soviet army, its one-time ally. If the Russians fell, Germany could turn its full attention to Britain. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin wanted the Allies to launch an invasion of German-held Europe as soon as possible, because Russia was being mauled by the Germans. But Churchill wanted to nibble at the edges of the German empire while bombing Germany from the air, and FDR went along with the Brits. FDR, Churchill, and Stalin managed to put their sharp differences aside and generally cooperate. That proved to be a key ingredient in the Allies’ ultimate success. The trio met several times during the war to plot strategy and negotiate about what the world would be like after the war. The most important of the meetings of FDR, Churchill, and Stalin actually came toward the end of the war at Yalta, a former palace on the Black Sea in the Soviet Union. FDR came to Yalta hoping to establish the groundwork for a practical and powerful United Nations, to be formed after the war, and also to convince the Russians to enter the war against Japan and help speed up the end of the war. Stalin eventually agreed, but at a price. In return, the Soviet dictator got the other two to agree to give the Soviets control over broad areas of Europe and a promise that each of the major nations on the UN Security Council would have veto power over council decisions. Allied forces make pivotal moves against German strategy One of the most immediate problems was dealing with the menace posed by German submarines, or U-boats, in the Atlantic. Traveling in packs, the subs sank three million tons of Allied shipping in the first half of 1942 alone. But the Allies worked out a system of convoys and developed better anti-sub tactics. Most importantly, they built far more cargo ships than the Germans could possibly sink. In the summer of 1942, Allied planes began bombing targets inside Germany. Eventually, the bombing would take a terrible toll. In 1943, 60,000 people were killed in the city of Hamburg, and the city of Dresden was all but destroyed. In the fall of 1942, Allied armies, under a relatively obscure American commander named Dwight D. Eisenhower, launched an attack in North Africa against Hitler’s best general, Erwin Rommel. The green American troops were whipped soundly at the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia in February 1943. But with bitter experience under their belts, U.S. forces combined with troops from Britain, Australia, and New Zealand to drive the Axis armies out of Egypt by mid-May. From Africa, the Allies invaded Sicily, and then advanced into the Italian mainland. Mussolini was overthrown and eventually executed by his own people. But the German army poured troops into the country and it took until the end of 1944 for Italy to be completely controlled. On the Eastern Front, meanwhile, the Russian army gradually had turned the tables on the invading Germans and begun pushing them back, despite staggering civilian and military losses. And in England, the Allies, under the leadership of Eisenhower, were preparing the greatest invasion force the world had ever seen, D-Day.
View Article