“Walking Notes”
Identify Key: Pople, Policies, Events, Vocabulary, Industries,
Inventions
411-440
Building the War Machine (Dave) 411-415
- There were military orders for things that cost 100 billion dollars.
- The war production board(WPD) halted manufacture and other things like cars and
gasoline to get raw materials to be able to use in the war.
- Farmers had to increase the products that they made while understaffed caused workers to
join the war.
- Investment in machinery and fertilizers helped to improve the situation of the farmers
- Inflation rose due to scarce consumer goods and full employment
- The Office of Price Administration (OPA) brought these prices in control and rationed
consumption of important goods.
- The National War Labor Board(NWLB) imposed limits on wages.
- Labor union membership increased from 10 to 13 million during the war
- Laborers didn’t like the limited wages and had walkouts and strikes to go against it.
- Smith-Connally anti-strike act happened in june 1943:
a. It let the federal government take business and their assets
b. Strike against government operated businesses with criminal offense
c. Washington took over coal mines and railroads while stoppage took less than 1% of
total working hours for the wartime labor force with all workers committed to the
war time efforts.
Manpower and WomanPower (Jared) 416-423
Armed Service Enlistments
- Certain industrial and agricultural workers exempt from draft
- Still shortage of farm and factory workers
- Bracero program:
a. Mexican agricultural workers, called braceros, came to harvest fruit and grain crops of
West
i. Program outlived war by some twenty years, becoming part of agricultural
economy in many western states
- more than six million women took jobs outside home:
a. At war's end, 2/3 of women war workers left labor force
b. Many forced out by returning servicemen
c. Many quit jobs voluntarily because of family obligations
d. Widespread rush into suburban domesticity and mothering of “baby boomers”
e. more than six million women took jobs outside home:
i. Over half had never worked for wages before
ii. Government obliged to set up 3,000 day-care centers to care for “Rosie the
Riveter's” children
iii. At end of war, many women not eager to give up work
iv. War foreshadowed eventual revolution in roles of women in American
society
v. Yet many women did not work for wages in wartime economy, but
continued traditional roles
Wartime Migration(Jared cont.)
Demographic Changes
- Many men and women in military decided not to return to hometown at war's end
- War industries sucked people into boomtowns—Los Angeles, Detroit, Seattle, Baton Rouge
- California's population grew by two million
- South experienced dramatic changes:
a. Received disproportionate share of defense contracts
b. Seeds of postwar “Sunbelt” established (see Map 34.1)
- Some 1.6 million blacks left South for jobs in war plants of West and North
- Forever after, race relations constituted a national, not a regional, issue
- Explosive tensions developed over employment, housing, and segregated facilities
a. Pushed by Randolph, Roosevelt issued executive order forbidding discrimination in
defense industries
b. Established Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) to monitor
compliance with edict
Blacks Drafted Into Armed Forces
- Assigned to service branches rather than combat units
- Subjected to petty degradations:
a. Segregated blood banks for wounded
- War helped embolden blacks in long struggle for equality
- Slogan—“Double V”—victory over dictators abroad and racism at home
- Membership in National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) shot
up to half-million mark
- New militant Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) committed to nonviolent “direct
action” (1942)
- Northward migration of African Americans accelerated after war:
a. Thanks to advent of mechanical cotton picker
i. Introduced in 1944, machine did work of 50 people at about 1/8th the cost
b. Cotton South's historic need for cheap labor disappeared
c. Some five million black tenant farmers and sharecroppers headed north in decades
after war
i. One of great migrations in American history
ii. By 1970 half of blacks lived outside South
iii. And urban became almost a synonym for black
- War prompted exodus of Native Americans from reservations
a. Thousands of men and women found work in major cities
b. Thousands more went into armed force
i. 90% of Indians resided on reservations in 1940
ii. Six decades later, more than ½ lived in cities, many in southern Calif.
c. 25,000 men served in armed forces
d. Served as “code talkers”
i. Transmitted radio messages in native languages, incomprehensible to
Germans and Japanese
- Rubbing together created some violent friction; e.g. in 1943:
a. Mexican Americans in Los Angeles viciously attacked by Anglo sailors
b. Brutal race riot in Detroit killed 25 blacks and 9 whites
Holding the Homefront (Zach):
Americans at Home Suffered a Little
- WWII was expensive:
a. The rest of the money for the way was borrowed.
b. The national debt skyrocketed from $49 billion in 1941 to $259 billion in 1945.
c. When production slipped into high gear, the war cost about $10 million an hour
i. It was the price of victory over such implacable
- WWII became even more expensive:
a. The bill amounted to more than $330 billion—
i. It was 10 times the direct cost of World War I
ii. Twice as much as all previous federal spending since 1776
b. Roosevelt would have preferred pay-as-you-go but the cost was simply too gigantic.
c. Income tax net expanded and some rates rose as high as 90% with only two-fifths of
the war bill paid from current revenues.
- Hand of government touched American lives more than ever before:
a. Scientific Research and Development
i. Established partnerships because government and universities underwrote
America’s technological and economic leadership in the postwar era.
b. Unemployment swept from land
c. War, not enlightened social policy, cured the Great Depression.
d. It was considered to be a “warfare-welfare state” (1941-1945)
- Hand of government touched American lives more than ever before (cont.)
a. Households felt constraints of the rationing system
b. Millions worked for government in armed forces
c. Millions worked in defense industries
d. The Office of Scientific Research and Development was created.
i. Channeled hundreds of millions of dollars into university-based scientific
research
- The war invigorated economy
a. It helped lift the country out of decade-long depression.
- The gross national product rose from $100 billion in 1940 to more than $200 billion in
1945
- The corporate profits rose from $6 billion in 1940 to almost twice that amount four years
later
- Despite wage ceiling, disposable personal income more than doubled with overtime pay
a. Roots of post-'45 era of big-government interventionism
The Rising Sun in the Pacific (Zach)
- Early successes of Japan's militarists was breathtaking:
a. They realized would have to win quickly or lose slowly
b. They expanded rapidly in Far East:
i. Japan took American outposts of Guam, Wake, Philippines
ii. They seized British-Chinese city port of Hong Kong and British Malaya
iii. They plunged into jungles of Burma
iv. And lunged southward to take oil-rich Dutch East Indies
- Better news came from Philippines, which succeeded in slowing down the Japanese
- When the Japanese landed, General Douglas MacArthur withdrew to a strong defensive
position at Bataan, not far from Manila:
c. Here 20,000 American troops, supported by force of ill-trained Filipinos, held off
Japanese attacks until April 9, 1942
d. Before inevitable American surrender, MacArthur ordered to depart secretly for
Australia
e. His army remnants treated with vicious cruelty in infamous eighty-mile Bataan
Death March to prisoner-of-war camps:
i. First in series of atrocities committed by both sides
f. Island fortress of Corregidor, in Manila harbor,
i. Held out until May 6, 1942, when it too surrendered
ii. Which left Japanese forces in complete control of Philippine archipelago (see
Map 34.2)
Japan’s Tide at Midway (Zach)
Japan's Continual March
- Invaded New Guinea, and landed on Solomon Islands
- Finally checked by naval battle fought in Coral Sea, May 1942
a. America, with Australian support, inflicted heavy losses on victory-flushed Japanese
b. First time fighting done by carrier-based aircraft
- Japan next undertook to seize Midway Island:
c. Epochal Battle of Midway, June 3-6, 1942—
d. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz forced Japanese to retreat after U.S. naval aircraft sank
four vitally important carriers
Midway a Pivotal Battle
- Combined with Battle of the Coral Sea, U.S. success at Midway halted Japan's offensive
- Japan did get America's islands of Kiska and Attu
a. Caused fear of invasion of United States through Alaska
- Japanese imperialists, overextended in 1942, suffered from “victory disease”
b. Their appetites were bigger than their stomachs.
American Leapfrogging Towards Tokyo
America Seized Initiative in Pacific
- US Armed Forces “leapfrogging” from Japanese-held islands
- Bypass Japanese forts, capture islands, setup airfields, neutralize with bombs, deprive of resources
- America landed in Guadalcanal Island in 1942
- 20,000 Japanese losses, 1,700 American losses
- Mass suicide from surviving Japanese soldiers and civilians from “Suicide Cliff”
- Bombing of Japan by B-29s began November 1944
The Allied Halting of Hitler
- American and British bombed German cities in August 1942
- British General Bernard Montgomery delivered attach at El Alamein, west of Cairo, Egypt, in
October 1942
- September 1942: Russians stalled German steamroller at Stalingrad, graveyard of Hitler’s hopes
- November 1942, Russians began crushing counteroffensive
- In 1943, Stalin had regained about ⅔ of blood soaked Soviet motherland from German invader
A Second Front from North Africa to Rome
Losses
- Americans reluctantly agreed to postpone massive invasion of Europe
- Assault on French-held North Africa a compromise second front
a. Attack in November 1942 led by American general Dwight D. (“Ike”) Eisenhower
b. With joint Allied operations, invasion was mightiest waterborne effort in history
c. After savage fighting, remnants of German-Italian army trapped in Tunisia and
surrendered in May, 1943
- Soviet—millions of soldiers and civilians lay dead by 1942 as Hitler's armies overran most of
western USSR
- Anglo-American losses—only in thousands by 1942
- By war's end, some 20 million Soviets had died
- Americans, including FDR, wanted to invade France in 1942 or 1943 to prevent Russian
defeat
- British military not enthusiastic about frontal attack on German-held France
a. Preferred to attack Hitler's Fortress Europe through “soft underbelly” of
Mediterranean
