WORLD WAR II OVERVIEW
READING:
World War II was the world’s first global war. The war
started in Europe in 1939 with the invasion of Poland by Germany
and for seven months it seemed that peace would prevail. That
hope was shattered with the attack, rapid conquest and occupation
of Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands between
April and June 1940.
Under heavy attack, Britain was able to evacuate over 300,000
troops in a dramatic rescue through a variety of vessels pressed
into emergency service: fishing boats, ferries, yachts and other
ships. France was defeated shortly thereafter and Britain stood
alone.
For most of 1939 and 1940 neutrality was the official position
of the United States. That position changed in September 1940
when President Franklin D. Roosevelt reached an agreement with
Britain to transfer 50 old destroyers. In March 1941, Congress
passed the Lend-Lease Act that gave further aid to Britain.
The United States entered the war in 1941 with the surprise attack
on Pearl Harbor, the major U.S. naval base in the Pacific. The
United States declared war on Japan on December 8 and Japan’s
Axis
allies, Germany and Italy, responded by declaring war on the U.S.
The United States, now a part of the Allied
forces, was faced with a two
front war - fighting a war in the Pacific and in Europe. The
three Axis Powers, Germany, Italy and Japan needed to be confronted
and defeated one by one. The decision was made to focus on the
defeat of Germany and Italy first because of their greater military
strength.
The first priority was the European front where U.S. forces would
undertake Italy and Germany. The initial Allied invasion took
place in the south, through North Africa which had fallen to the
Germans, and up through Italy, the “soft underbelly of Europe.”
The Italian campaign kept hundreds of thousands of German soldiers
in the south. This was crucial to the Allied invasion plan of
Western Europe through France later in the spring of 1944.
Millions of men fought during World War II. Nisei
(second generation Japanese American) soldiers were motivated
to fight by their patriotism and the need to prove their loyalty.
In the1940’s, other Americans could not get beyond their
appearance. War hysteria created tragic situations on the home
front and allowed for a gross miscarriage of justice.
On February 19, 1942 President Roosevelt signed Executive
Order 9066. This order granted the military the power to remove
people from designated military areas. The order was solely used
against Japanese Americans. Italian Americans and German Americans,
whose homelands were also at war with the United States, were
not subjected to this exclusion.
By June 1942, 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast
had been removed from their homes. They were given only days to
get rid of their homes, businesses, personal property and family
pets. Entire families with elderly parents, teenagers and very
young children were all included in the order. They were housed
at assembly
centers; many of them located at horse race tracks and fair
grounds. Some months later they were dispersed into ten concentration
camps located in desolate areas of the country.
Nisei men were determined to prove they were Americans. Three
military units were organized with Japanese American recruits.
The 100th
Infantry Battalion (Separate) and the 442nd
Regimental Combat Team fought in Europe as segregated units.
The men of the Military
Intelligence Service (MIS) served as individuals or in small
teams, assigned to units in the Pacific. At war’s end, these
courageous units had clearly illustrated that being an American
was a matter of the mind and spirit and not a matter of race.
World War II was a complex war fought in many campaigns and battles
to achieve the objective of victory. In Europe, war finally ends
in May 1945. The world had experienced sixty million casualties,
twenty million military, and twice as many civilian dead and wounded.
Of that number, eleven million people were victims of genocide,
the systematic, planned elimination of a racial, political, or
cultural group, carried out by Germany. A new word, Holocaust,
emerged from World War II, referring to the genocide of six million
Jews.
In the Pacific, the war ends in September 1945 after the Japanese
cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki experience the effects of the
world’s first atomic bombs. Over one hundred thousand people
lost their lives in the bombings. At the end of the war, the map
of Europe and the Pacific changed dramatically, as nations were
divided and re-created in new forms. Sixty million people were
casualties of the war. Millions more were displaced and the economies
of entire nations destroyed. Years would be spent rebuilding.
At home in the United States, the struggle for justice continued
for many years. The struggle finally culminated in 1988 with the
passage of H.R. 442, which gave the Japanese American survivors
of the wartime incarceration, a government apology and individual
payments of $20,000 for the injustices committed by the government.
ACTIVITIES
Framework Standard Context
California Standards
Grade 11
11.7 Students analyze the American participation in World War
II.
