The police were by then largely in Nazi hands and they attacked
the Communists with a vengeance. The party was outlawed and
their leaders were arrested—with them went many Social Democrats
and other outspoken anti-Nazis. "Political" and "criminal"
offenses (as defined by the Nazis) were handed over to the political
police (the Gestapo) and "People's Courts," created
in 1934. Regular courts were enjoined from interfering with
the police and confined to civil suits. In March, 1933 the Reichstag
passed an "Enabling Act" divesting itself of legislative
authority. As Chancellor, Hitler could henceforth issue laws,
even those violating the constitution, without consulting the
Reichstag.
Hitler called his new order the Third Reich. He declared that,
following the First Reich, or Holy Roman Empire, and the Second
Reich, or empire founded by Bismarck, the Third Reich carried
on the process of true German history. Like Mussolini, Hitler
took the title of leader, or, in German, the Fuhrer. With the
authority he now possessed Hitler rapidly proceeded to establish
control over the whole of state and society. In the spring of
1933 all political parties were disbanded, and the Nazi party
was declared the only lawful political organization in the country.
Labor unions were abolished and strikes were forbidden. The
government assumed increasing controls over industry, while
leaving ownership in private hands—Hitler needed the support
of big business to launch his rearmament program. Churches,
both Protestant and Catholic, were "coordinated" with
the new regime; their clergy were forbidden to criticize its
activities. A Nazi Youth Movement, and schools and universities,
indoctrinated the young in the new concepts.
To assure his personal power Hitler established an elite corps,
the SS (Guard Detachment). The SS began as a bodyguard whose
members took the oath of personal loyalty to Hitler and swore
to carry out without question any orders he issued. Into it
were recruited the most vicious elements of the Nazi movement.
They staffed police posts, both overt and secret, and gradually
penetrated much of the party and state machinery. From their
ranks were drawn the concentration camp guards and, during world
War II, the mass murderers.
The advent of the Nazis to power led immediately to the issuance
of anti-Jewish laws. These laws deprived Jews of German citizenship
(and hence the protection of the state) and forbade them to
marry "Aryans." Jews were defined as anyone who professed
the Jewish faith or who had at least one grandparent who was
Jewish. Jews were beaten up, hounded, driven from public office,
ruined in private business, fined as a community, put to death,
or forced to flee the country after being stripped of all their
possessions. These actions foreshadowed the wartime extermination
of millions of Jews.
Hitler's main objective, once he gained dictatorial powers,
was to give Germany a powerful armed force with which to conquer
"living space" and subjugate the Continent. Shortly
after the Nazis came to power the Germany economy was put on
a wartime footing. Production soared: between 1932 and 1935
alone German steel production trebled. Hitler expected the armed
forces and the economy to be fully geared for war by 1940.
Learning Objective:
Understand the European causes of World War II.
During his first two years as Chancellor Hitler pursued a relatively
cautious foreign policy so as not to alarm Britain and France
until he had solidified his grip on Germany and made progress
with the secret rearmament program.
Hitler made his first overt aggressive move in March, 1935.
He formally denounced the disarmament clauses of the Versailles
Treaty and introduced compulsory military training. This measure
did not produce any response from Britain and France. In fact
Britain signed with Germany a naval agreement which, by establishing
ratios of naval power between the two nations, implicitly legitimized
Hitler's breach of the Versailles Treaty. A year later German
troops marched into the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland.
Again nothing happened, although by so Hitler had knocked out
another prop of the French security system. There is general
agreement among historians that the years 1935-1936 offered
the last chance to stop Nazi expansion short of general war.
We know now that German troops marching into the Rhineland had
orders to pull back in the event of French countermeasures.
The impunity with which Hitler violated the Versailles Treaty
gained him immense prestige in Germany and vastly increased
his self-confidence.
Behind Allied inaction lay the mood known as "appeasement."
It was a crucial element in the chain of events leading to World
War II, and indirectly played a major part in the conduct of
international relations in the cold war that followed World
War II. To "appease" meant yielding to the demands
of the dictators in the belief that once these demands were
satisfied the dictators would settle down and turn into good
members of the international community. The principal and universal
element behind appeasement was pacifism. World War I had settled
few of the political problems of Europe at a horrible cost—half
of all French males between the ages of 20 and 32 in 1914 had
been killed in the war. There was widespread expectation that
another world war would be infinitely more destructive, particularly
for the civilian population. Anything seemed preferable to fighting.
The pacifistic mood of the time is well reflected in a resolution
adopted by some Oxford University students one month after Hitler
came to power: "This House will under no circumstances
fight for its King or country." Antiwar sentiment also
pervaded much of German public opinion. Hitler's early popularity
at home derived in large part from the fact that he achieved
his aims by diplomatic pressure and not by war. With the exception
of Winston Churchill, remembered chiefly for the fiasco of the
1915 Gallipoli campaign and for his poor performance as Chancellor
of the Exchequer, and who was kept out of the British Cabinet
and ignored, British leadership was addicted to appeasement.
As late as 1938 Britain's expenditures on armaments were only
one-quarter those of Germany.
In October, 1935 Italy launched an unprovoked attack on Ethiopia
from Italian Somalia. The League of Nations condemned Italy
as the aggressor and voted to impose on it economic sanctions.
The economic sanctions were never enforced and Italy soon had
all of Ethiopia. But the League's actions were irritating enough
to push Italy into Germany's arms. Before long the two countries
established close diplomatic links. Mussolini spoke of Rome
and Berlin as forming a political "Axis." The term
was subsequently applied to the whole anti-democratic, totalitarian
bloc.
The Ethiopian war was barely over when a civil war broke out
in Spain. In July, 1936 A group of conservative army officers,
led by General Francisco Franco, invaded Spain from Morocco
with the purpose of overthrowing a left-wing republican government
which had recently won the elections. The Spanish Civil War
was the most devastating war in all Spanish history; over 600,000
died, and it was accompanied by extreme cruelties on both sides.
Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy immediately aligned themselves
with Franco and sent troops (the Italians over 50,000) and equipment.
The Soviet Union sent equipment, technicians and political advisors
to the government side and stigmatized the rebels under Franco
as the agents of international fascism. Thousands of volunteers
of leftist or liberal sympathy, from the U.S. and Europe, served
in Spain with the loyalist republican forces. The Spanish Civil
War split the world into fascist and antifascist camps. The
war ended in March, 1939 when Franco established an authoritarian,
fascist-type rule over the exhausted country.
In November, 1936, Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern
Pact, ostensibly directed against the Communist International
but actually a treaty of friendship. Italy signed a year later,
and in 1941 the pact was renewed with eleven other countries
also joining. Thus, while the democracies were ineffectually
trying to preserve peace at any price, a group of expansionist
countries formed a counter-alliance. The successes of Nazi diplomacy
lay in its knowledge of precisely how far to push blackmail
before its victims rebelled. Its crowning achievement was the
Munich agreement of 1938.
Hitler believed that the 85 million Germans had to acquire
additional "living space," raw materials and food
stuffs or face extinction. Since history showed that space could
be acquired only by violence, Hitler believed that war was inevitable—the
only question was when, and under what conditions. Germany would
attain the peak of military strength in 1943-1945, and this
would be the latest date for launching war, although it could
begin earlier. In any event, Hitler's immediate goal in 1938
was to destroy Austria and Czechoslovakia so as to protect Germany's
flank for the critical operations in the West. Hitler cleverly
camouflaged his assault on Austria and Czechoslovakia with slogans
of national self-determination. All he wanted, he proclaimed,
was to bring into the Reich the Germans who against their will
had been separated from it: the Austrians and the German minority
in the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia.
The Austrian Republic was brought down in March, 1938, by the
combined pressures of Germany from without and a Nazi "Fifth
Column" from within. The country with its 6 million Germans
was then fused with Germany into a Greater Reich. The Czechs,
unlike the Austrians wanted no dealings with the Germans and
were prepared to resist them: their military equipment was first
rate, and their frontier was heavily fortified. Czechoslovakia
was the only country in central Europe in 1938 that was still
a democracy and it had the highest standard of living east of
Germany. Strategically it was the keystone of Europe. It had
a firm alliance with France, and an alliance with the Soviet
Union; Soviet aid was made dependent of the functioning of the
French alliance. In the spring of 1938 the Nazis began to stir
up trouble among the 3 million Germans inhabiting the Sudeten
region. Prague was prepared to go far in meeting the Sudeten
Germans' demands for autonomy, but each time it made a concession
the stakes were raised and more civil disturbances followed.
Hitler, declaring "intolerable" alleged Czech persecution
of the Sudeten Germans, threatened to intervene on their behalf.
In September, 1938, war seemed imminent.
Hitler invited the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain,
the French Premier Edouard Daladier, and Mussolini to a meeting
at Munich to deal with the crisis. Czechoslovakia and the Soviet
Union (which had been urging a firm stand against Germany) were
excluded from the meeting. At Munich Chamberlain and Daladier
accepted Hitler's terms and then put enormous pressure on the
Czech government to yield. France repudiated its treaty obligations
to protect Czechoslovakia, and ignored the Soviets who had reaffirmed
their willingness to aid the Czechs if the French acted. Germany
was allowed to annex the Sudetenland. This area contained the
mountainous approaches and the fortifications, so that its loss
left Czechoslovakia militarily defenseless. Hitler promised
to guarantee the integrity of what remained of Czechoslovakia.
Barely one month after the signature of the Munich agreement,
in total disregard of his pledges, Hitler ordered the German
army to occupy the remainder of Czechoslovakia. The republic,
shorn of its fortifications and with no allies, could offer
no resistance and capitulated in March, 1939.
Hitler then began to apply pressure on Poland, demanding Danzig
and a corridor linking Germany with East Prussia. The Poles
refused to bargain on these matters. Britain and France finally
realized that nothing short of European hegemony would satisfy
Hitler and they guaranteed Poland's independence. But Hitler
doubted that these pledges would be honored should he succeed
in smashing Poland with one quick blow. On April 3, 1939, he
issued secret orders to prepare the invasion of Poland.
Stalin realized the Hitler posed a serious threat to the Soviet
Union. Hitler's threats of an anti-Communist crusade and the
1936 conclusion of the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan were direct
threats to his country. The Soviet Union was diplomatically
isolated, and in the event of a combined German-Japanese attack
could count on the support of no major power. Stalin took measures
to overcome this isolation. In September 1934 the Soviets joined
the League of Nations. In May, 1935 it signed the previously
mentioned treaties with Czechoslovakia and France. Perhaps the
Soviet purges of 1935-1938 were connected with the international
situation, serving to eliminate rivals for power in the event
of war and internal anarchy.
Western appeasement of Hitler aroused Stalin's suspicions.
He began to believe that it was part of a deliberate plot on
the part of England and France to buy their own safety by deflecting
Hitler's ambitions from the West to the East. The Munich agreement
and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia seemed to confirm
these suspicions. Stalin appears to have concluded that Eastern
Europe had been conceded to Hitler as a springboard for an attack
against the Soviet Union. Since by early 1939 Japanese and Soviet
troops were involved in clashes along the Mongolian border,
Stalin's alarm was based on realistic considerations. Stalin
decided to buy himself time. On August 23, 1939 the Soviet Union
and Germany signed a treaty of nonaggression and friendship.
In a protocol kept secret at the time, it was agreed that in
any future territorial rearrangement the Soviet Union and Germany
would divide Poland between them, that the Soviet Union would
have a "sphere of influence" over Finland, the Baltic
States, and Bessarabia (which had been lost to Rumania in World
War I). In return the Soviets pledged to stay out of any war
between Germany and Poland, or between Germany and the Western
democracies.
The Nazi-Soviet pact stupefied the world. Communism and Nazism,
supposed to be ideological opposites, had come together. The
pact was recognized as the signal for war; all last minute negotiations
failed. The Germans invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. On
September 3 Great Britain and France declared war on Germany
and World War II began.
Learning Objective:
Understand the war in Europe during 1939-1941.
The invasion of Poland exceeded all Nazi hopes. Using mechanized
units to break through enemy lines, spread out behind them,
and form vast "pincers" to isolate and trap large
enemies units, the German blitzkrieg ("lightning war")
reached Warsaw in a week. (To illustrate how deadly war had
become, the Germans took 45,000 casualties in the "easy"
victory over Poland). On September 17 the Soviet Union entered
eastern Poland to claim the territories accorded it by the secret
agreement with Germany. Simultaneously, Soviet troops occupied
strategic bases in the three Baltic republics.
In October, 1939, when Finland refused Soviet demands for territorial
concessions (Leningrad was only 20 miles from the Finnish border)
the Soviet army attacked. The campaign at first went badly for
the Soviets, confirming European opinion in its low estimate
of their fighting capacity. In the end, however, Soviet superiority
in numbers forced the Finns to capitulate in March, 1940. The
Finns had to yield somewhat more territory to the USSR than
originally demanded but retained their independence.
In the West the winter and spring of the first year of war
passed without action, in what came to be known as the "phony
war." The only important engagement occurred in Scandinavia.
The British and the Germans simultaneously tried to seize Norway,
but the Germans got there first with larger forces, occupying
Denmark on the way in April, 1940. The Scandinavian campaign
cost Germany most of its navy. In July, 1940 the German navy
could only deploy for action three cruisers and four destroyers.
All the other ships of destroyer size or larger had been sunk
or damaged. These losses would be significant when Hitler wanted
to invade Britain.
The German offensive against France through the Low Countries
began on May 10, 1940. Belgian fortresses were captured in a
matter of hours by specially trained parachute units. Dutch
cities were bombed into submission. Rotterdam was leveled, killing
in the process 40,000 civilians. Refugees seeking to flee the
combat zone were deliberately machine-gunned from the air to
create chaos, clog the roads, and hamper reinforcements. The
French and British sent into Belgium the majority of their forces.
But the Germans delivered their main armored thrust through
Luxembourg and the Ardennes forest, long considered by the French
to be impassable to tanks. The German divisions drove deep into
northern France and cut off the Allied armies in Belgium. The
Dutch and Belgian armies capitulated and a large part of the
French army surrendered.
Subsequently, the British managed to evacuate nearly their
entire trapped Expeditionary Force, plus a considerable French
contingent—338,000 men in all—through Dunkirk, but most of
their equipment had to be left behind. On June 13-14 the Germans
entered Paris, and shortly after France signed an armistice.
The country was divided into two zones: the northern one was
placed under German occupation, and the southern one was established
as a satellite state ruled from Vichy. The republic was dead;
the very slogan Liberty, Equality, Fraternity was banned from
official use.
Mussolini attacked France on June 10 as soon as it was clear
that Germany had defeated it. Shortly thereafter, he invaded
Greece and moved against the British in Africa. The Duce tied
his own destinies, for good or ill, to those of the Fuhrer.
Since the Germans were emphatically the senior partner in this
combination, since they were on good terms with Franco in Spain,
and since the USSR was benevolently neutral, they now dominated
the European continent. Hitler impressed millions of French,
Russians, Poles, Czechs, and others, prisoners of war or civilians,
to work as slave labor in his war industries, in one of the
largest forcible displacements of population in history.
Britain was left alone to face the Axis powers. In May, 1940,
Winston Churchill became Prime Minister. Churchill never wavered
in his determination. Britain, he announced, would fight "if
necessary for years, if necessary alone," until Germany
gave up all its conquests. Confronted with this intransigence
Hitler prepared to invade Britain. The first phase of the operation
was to secure mastery of the air, essential for the safe transport
of the invasion force across the Channel. Early in August the
Luftwaffe, the German air force, launched its offensive against
the Royal Air Force (RAF). British aircraft and training were
slightly superior to Germany's, the British had broken the German
communication code, and the use of radar, all combined to give
the RAF a two to one kill ratio over German aircraft. If Germany
had continued its attack on the RAF it would have succeeded
in its plan to destroy the British air force, but the Luftwaffe's
losses were so high that in September it changed tactics: instead
of daytime attacks on air installations, it carried out nighttime
attacks on cities. The intention was to break civilian morale
and force Britain to make peace. These attacks failed and Hitler
lost the Battle of Britain and his chance to invade England.
At the end of 1940 Hitler was at the peak of his power. Yet
his power derived from a five-year priority in armament, the
gap between German and foreign military power was bound to narrow:
everyone was arming now, including the United States. In other
words, Hitler had to act while he still held his great advantage.
In September, 1940 Germany concluded with Italy and Japan a
Tripartite Pact dividing Asia and Africa into spheres of influence:
Italy was to have the Mediterranean, Japan southeast Asia, and
Germany central Africa.
In December, 1940 Hitler gave his General Staff instructions
to prepare for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet
Union. Hitler's strategy was to launch a lightning offensive
that would bring German armies in 8 to 10 weeks to the banks
of the Volga. The territories conquered were to provide Germany
with abundant foodstuffs, raw materials, and slave labor, transforming
German-dominated Europe into a self-sufficient, impregnable
fortress. Areas east of the Volga were to be left to the Russians.
Having destroyed the Soviet army, Hitler intended to turn southward
and take over the Middle East and North Africa. The assault
on the USSR was conceived not merely as a war of conquest; it
was to be a war of extermination, the first phase in clearing
Eastern Europe of the "inferior races" for subsequent
German settlement. The Germans about to invade the Soviet Union
were given the explicit authority—indeed, they were told that
it was their patriotic duty—to kill anyone whom they considered
to be or chose to define as being a "Communist" or
an "intellectual," as well as captured enemy soldiers.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union was originally scheduled
for mid-May, 1941 but it had to be postponed a month. The Italians
bogged down in Greece, and in April Hitler sent troops to bail
them out. In the process the Germans also invaded and occupied
Yugoslavia. On June, 22, 1941, three million German troops along
with more than 500,000 soldiers of countries allied with Germany
(and over 600,000 horses) plunged into Soviet territory. The
Soviets were not prepared for the attack, and had not even fully
mobilized. Within six weeks the road to Moscow lay open. By
the end of September the Germans had taken a toll of 2.5 million
men, 22,000 guns, 18,000 tanks, and 14,000 planes. But Hitler,
intending to avoid Napoleon's mistake, decided to postpone capture
of the capital in order first to destroy what was left of Soviet
armies and industrial resources in the northern and southern
parts of the country.
Hitler's decision to postpone the capture of Moscow gave the
Soviets two months in which to raise fresh troops in the east
and organize their defenses. It also forced the Germans to open
the drive on Moscow at the onset of the winter, for which they
had made no provisions. The offensive resumed early in October.
On December 2, in savage fighting, the Germans penetrated the
suburbs of the city, but here they were stopped. German soldiers
were exhausted from 6 months of continuous combat and froze
in their summer uniforms; their motorized equipment stalled
for lack of antifreeze. On December 5-6 the Russians counterattacked
and by the middle of January, 1942 the German army had been
pushed a 100 miles to the west of Moscow. Hitler, infuriated
by the reverse, sacked his top officers and assumed personal
command.
On the Soviet side, the German invasion produced a tremendous
surge of national sentiment. At first the population offered
little resistance to the Germans, and in some areas even welcomed
them. But as soon as the army and SS began to shoot civilians
and prisoners, and ship people to Germany (ultimately over 3
million were sent as slave labor) resistance stiffened. Surrounded
Soviet military units often refused to surrender, fighting to
the last man. Stalin, in his propaganda, abandoned all pretense
of defending communism, and frankly exhorted the nation to fight
for "Holy Russia." The Soviet determination had not
been planned for by Hitler and his generals, for the miserable
showing the Red Army had made in the war with Finland led them
to expect a rapid collapse of Soviet morale.
Learning Objective:
Understand Japanese aggression that led to World War II
Many factors were responsible for the strong imperialist drive
that emerged in Japan at the beginning of the 20th century.
The nationalist desire for equality with the Western powers
was one important factor. Another was the economic motivation
of maintaining access to the raw materials and markets of East
Asia, which might be denied Japan if neighboring countries fell
under the domination of one or another of the powers. Perhaps
the most important underlying factor was the prevailing political
instability of East Asia. In Korea and China, where Japan had
the greatest economic advantage, old impotent governments were
being undermined by revolutionary movements. The impending collapse
of these governments caused consternation in Japan because they
might be replaced with either Western control, or nationalistic
governments that could rally the people against Japan's security
and economic interests.
Prior to World War I, the international system in Asia was
in rough equilibrium. World War I upset this balance, and caused
the eventual collapse of the East Asian power structure. During
the war Japan seized German holdings in Shantung and German-held
islands in the South Pacific: the Carolinas, Marianas, Marshalls,
Palau, and Yap.
In 1911 the Manchu dynasty was overthrown and China underwent
years of anarchy. Taking advantage of the situation, Japan delivered
in January, 1915, 21 Demands on China. The 21 Demands sought
Chinese recognition of the transference of German rights in
Shantung to Japan; the employment of Japanese as advisors to
the Chinese government; Chinese purchase of arms from Japan;
and permission for Japan to construct railways in China. These
demands caused an international uproar: first, because they
were interpreted as a unilateral departure from the system of
understanding developed among the powers since the Chinese-Japanese
War of 1895; and second, because it marked a growing Japanese-American
estrangement and the emergence of the United States' role as
protector of the new Chinese Republic which had come into existence
in 1912. After negotiations with the U.S., Japan withdrew its
demand for Japanese "advisors" to the Chinese government
(Chinese acceptance of this demand would have made China a virtual
protectorate of Japan) and China accepted the rest.
The issues between Japan and the U.S. reappeared at the Paris
Peace Conference of 1919. Japan requested that a clause advocating
racial equality be inserted in the League of Nations Covenant.
The U.S. and Britain, feared that this would mean that Asians
would have to be admitted to their countries as immigrants on
an equal basis with Europeans, and they voted it down. In addition,
Wilson supported China's contentions that the war had canceled
Germany's leasehold in Shantung and that the treaties Japan
had forced upon her were void since they were obtained by coercion.
Wilson only capitulated when Japan threatened to walk out of
the peace conference and boycott the League. These actions convinced
the Japanese that they were still not accepted as equal partners
by the Western world.
When World War I ended, the U.S., Great Britain, and Japan
found themselves on the threshold of a great naval arms race.
The U.S. government planned construction of a vast fleet of
39 battleships and 12 cruisers. Britain and Japan would either
have to expend vast sums in counter building or fall behind
in the race. The U.S. was uneasy about the British-Japanese
Alliance (1905) and wanted a navy that could defeat the combined
Japanese-British fleet. Pressure from Britain and the U.S. public
(who were not eager to spend huge sums on defense that soon
after World War I) caused the Harding Administration to call
a conference in Washington in November, 1921. At the Washington
Conference a 5:5:3 ratio in battleships and aircraft carriers
for the U.S., Great Britain and Japan was set. Lesser craft
remained unregulated. In return for Japanese acceptance of a
smaller ratio (which the Japanese believed would be sufficient
to guarantee its dominance in the western Pacific), the U.S.
promised Japan that it would not increase its fortifications
in the Pacific west of Hawaii and Britain pledged that it would
not increase them east of Singapore and north of Australia.
The British-Japanese Alliance was terminated.
From 1928 to 1932 Japan was brought to a crisis point by the
onset of the Great Depression and by rising internal opposition
to the framework of foreign relations established by the Washington
Conference. The army wanted to take stronger measures against
China in Manchuria, fearing that if they did not, the opportunity
to secure them permanently for Japan would be lost. The Kuomintang,
the Nationalist Party in China under the leadership of Chiang
Kai-shek, embarked on a campaign of national unification, accompanied
by radical antiforeign outbursts and by slogans demanding an
end to the unequal treaties that the powers (including Japan)
had forced China to sign. China was also weakened by the civil
war between the Communists under the leadership of Mao Zedong,
and the Nationalists.
The Manchurian Incident on September 18, 1931 can be viewed
as the beginning of World War II. A small explosion on the tracks
of the Japanese railway was taken as sufficient pretext for
attacking Chinese troops and expanding Japanese control. The
Japanese army conquered all of Manchuria and established a Japanese
puppet state, Manchukuo. When the League of Nations condemned
Japan as the aggressor, the Japanese left the League. After
decades of sowing the winds of nationalism among the Japanese
people, the elites were now reaping the whirlwind. They had
used education, the media, and a variety of grassroots organizations
to mobilize nationalist sentiment among the populace for the
hard struggles required to support industrialism and imperialism,
and now the government was caught in a trap of its own making.
Popular nationalism became a runaway force, extremely difficult
to control — especially for a government so weak and cumbersome.
By 1936, the military controlled the Japanese government.
For China, the Japanese conquest of Manchuria was disastrous.
After 1931 the Nationalist government completely neglected land
reform and the terrible poverty of the Chinese peasant. Chinese
peasants paid about half of their crops to their landlords in
rent. Fifty percent of the land was owned by a mere 4 percent
of the families, usually absentee landlords living in cities.
Peasants were heavily in debt and chronically underfed. Eggs
and meat accounted for only 2 percent of the food peasants consumed.
The Manchurian Incident was a turning point for Japan. Japan
abandoned the general policy of cooperation with the Western
powers, and chose to pursue its own destiny in East Asia. The
leadership now spoke of an "Asian Monroe Doctrine,"
declaring Japan's responsibility for maintaining peace in Asia.
To maintain the strategic posture demanded by its new policy
Japan now needed military power sufficient for three major tasks:
to defeat the Soviet army, whose strength on the borders of
Manchukuo had been vastly augmented; to guarantee the security
of the home islands against the U.S. navy; and to compel the
Chinese government to accept Japan's position in Manchuria and
northern China. Japan was never able to achieve these objectives.
Learning Objective:
Understand United States foreign policy prior to its entry into
World War II.
As the world edged toward war in the mid-1930s a wave of isolationist
sentiment swept across the United States. A Gallup poll in 1937,
for example, revealed that 64 percent of the public viewed intervention
in World War I as a mistake. A 1934 Senate investigation led
by the isolationist Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota revealed
that vast profits were made by arms manufactures and financiers
during World War I. As Nye summed it up, "When Americans
went into the fray, they little thought that they were…fighting to save the skins of American bankers who…had
two billions of dollars of loans to the Allies in jeopardy."
The investigation seemed almost as anti-business in bias as
antiwar, and reflected the widespread view that greedy bankers
and industrialists encouraged or instigated international strife—a
much too simple explanation for war.
In July, 1937 a clash between Japanese and Chinese troops in
Peking (the "China Incident"), broadened into an all-out
war by Japan to reduce China to a protectorate status. The "China
Incident" marked a turning point in American policy. President
Roosevelt turned to a more clearly internationalist course.
He hoped to keep the U.S. out of war, but, not at the expense
of the United States' interests in Asia and Europe.
Gradually, as public support for a stronger course slowly developed
in America, the State Department indicated to Japan that a line
was being drawn. The Two-Ocean Naval Act of 1938 vastly increased
naval construction. Meanwhile Japan openly proclaimed in 1938
her plan for a "New Order" for East Asia, claiming
that the Open Door no longer applied in China. The U.S. objected
vigorously to the "New Order" and reasserted its interests
in China and the Far East. The Pacific Fleet was moved to Pearl
Harbor to remind Tokyo of American power and will to resist.
Finally, the administration in mid-1939 gave the required notice
to terminate the Japanese-American commercial treaty of 1911,
thereby opening the way for economic sanctions against Japan.
Hitler's total disregard for the Munich Agreement and his invasion
of Poland in September, 1939 helped weaken the isolationist
sentiment in America. A Gallup poll taken after the fall of
Poland indicated that 84 percent of the American people wanted
an Allied victory and 76 percent, despite an overwhelming desire
to remain at peace, expected America to become involved in the
war sooner or later.
After the fall of Poland Congress passed the "Cash &
Carry Act." Belligerents now could purchase arms and other
war goods provided they paid cash and transported their purchases
on their own ships. The act still banned loans to belligerent
governments and prohibited U.S. ships from entering war zones.
Since the British navy ruled the seas, "Cash and Carry"
obviously would benefit the Allies while giving Americans profits
without any risk of involvement. The administration felt confident
that, assured of U.S. supplies, Britain and France could defeat
Hitler without American intervention.
The fall of France stunned Americans. It seemed incredible
that France, which had held out so heroically in World War I,
could be utterly defeated in a campaign of a few weeks duration.
Many feared that Britain would also fall, leaving no one to
stand between the Nazi armed machine and an unprepared America.
American interests were definitely at stake. In a Hitler dominated
Europe, U.S. trade would be restricted or even terminated. A
victory over Britain would give Germany the world's strongest
navy and probable control of the North Atlantic, threatening
both U.S. security and trade. Along with its Japanese ally,
the fascists could threaten American security and economic interests
anywhere on the globe. Americans also could not look kindly
upon fascism—an ideology totally foreign to the American concept
of liberal-capitalism—being spread throughout the world. Yet,
when the Germans struck in the West, the U.S. army could field
fewer than a third the number of divisions Belgium put in the
field; there were all of 150 fighters and 50 heavy bombers in
the army air force.
In this crisis, FDR decided to seek an unprecedented third
term in the presidency. Congress was galvanized into appropriating
over $10 billion for military defense and passing the first
peacetime military conscription law in U.S. history (the draft
was extended in 1941 by only one vote). He helped insure Republican
support for his policies by bring in two Republicans into his
cabinet (Frank Knox [1936 vice-presidential candidate] as Secretary
of the Navy and Henry L. Stimson [Secretary of State under Hoover]
as Secretary of War).
A desperate Britain pleaded with FDR for more arms. Britain
particularly needed destroyers to cope with German U-boat attacks.
Roosevelt understood that Britain's survival was in America's
best interests. As he once remarked to an aide: "If we
want to keep out of this war, the longer we keep the Allies
going, that much longer we stay out of this war." Roosevelt
still had to mollify public opinion so he could not come right
out and give Britain war goods. On September 2, 1940 Britain
granted the U.S. long-term leases to six Western Hemisphere
bases, and gave two others free, in exchange for 50 American
mothballed World War I destroyers. London also announced that
the British fleet would never fall into German hands. The eight
bases, from Newfoundland to British Guiana strengthened the
ability of the U.S. to defend the Western Hemisphere and Roosevelt
emphasized that point—he even called the swap the most important
contribution to American security since the Louisiana Purchase—but
the real significance of the deal was that it marked the end
of neutrality for the U.S. Henceforth it assumed the role of
a nonbelligerent aiding one side in the war against the other.
Roosevelt still could not move too fast. Polls revealed that
while four of every five Americans supported aid to England,
82 percent opposed entering the war. In the 1940 presidential
campaign The Republican candidate, Wendell L. Willkie, questioned
FDR's "promise to keep our boys out of foreign wars."
Roosevelt did win a third term, though by a closer margin than
in 1932 and 1936.
After the election, in December, 1940, FDR declared in a radio
address to the nation that the United States must become "the
great arsenal of democracy." To avoid the World War I problem
of war debts, the President proposed that material be transferred
or leased to the Allies for payment in kind "or any other
direct or indirect benefit" of value to the U.S. Clause
VII of the Lend-Lease Act contained a blueprint for a postwar
open-door designed to break down such barriers to trade as the
British imperial preference system. On March 11, 1940 Roosevelt
signed the Lend-Lease Act into law. Ultimately the country expended
around $50 billion under the act.
The U.S. rapidly drifted into a limited and undeclared war
with Germany after the passage of lend-lease. Roosevelt acted
primarily upon his own executive authority as Commander-in-Chief
in taking these measures, bypassing Congress. The U.S. seized
Axis shipping in American ports, the navy patrolled Atlantic
shipping routes reporting German U-boat sightings to the British,
and American troops occupied the Danish colonies of Greenland
in April, 1941 and Iceland in July, to prevent an Axis seizure.
The American navy began to convoy American shipping loaded with
lend-lease goods half-way across the Atlantic, thereby effectively
doubling the efficiency of the British escort fleet.
In September, 1941 the destroyer the USS Greer was attacked
by a German submarine as it broadcast the submarine's position
to a British patrol plane. Less than candidly, Roosevelt publicly
branded the attack as unprovoked and issued orders to the navy
to shoot on sight at those "rattlesnakes of the sea."
After this incident the U.S. navy also escorted British shipping
half-way across the Atlantic. In October, the Germans attacked
the destroyer Kearney and sank the Reuben James, both of which
were engaged in convoying. These incidents outraged the public,
and Congress in November permitted the arming of American merchant
ships and their sailing into the war zones. An undeclared limited
naval war existed between the U.S. and Germany by the fall of
1941.
As the China conflict expanded Japan was less prepared to deal
with the Soviet army on the Manchurian border and the American
fleet in the Pacific. At the time Germany began the war in Europe,
the Japanese were in the last stages of being defeated by the
Soviet Union in bitter and bloody fighting on the border of
Manchuria and Outer Mongolia (the Nomonhan Incident); at the
same time the American navy embarked on increasing the size
of its Pacific fleet. By the spring of 1940 the Japanese concluded
that America's crash program would result in its gaining naval
hegemony in the Pacific by 1942, and that Japan must have access
to the oil of the Dutch East Indies in order to cope with U.S.
power. In the autumn of 1940 Japan signed the Tripartite Pact
with Germany and Italy, in which the signatories pledged to
aid one another if attacked by a power not currently involved
in the European war or the fighting in China. Japan thereby
hoped to isolate the U.S. and dissuade it from conflict with
Japan, thus opening the way for Japan to seize the European
colonies in Southeast Asia, grasp the resources it needed for
self-sufficiency, and cut off Chinese supply lines. To free
its northern flank Japan signed a neutrality pact with the USSR
in April 1941; and when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in
June, the Manchukuo-Soviet border seemed wholly secure. In July,
1941 Japanese troops entered French Indochina.
The U.S. responded to these actions by banning the sale of
aviation gasoline to Japan in July, 1940, added scrap iron to
the prohibited list in October, and in December gave Chiang
Kai-shek a $100 million loan and promises of military aid. Roosevelt
also stationed the Pacific Fleet permanently at Pearl Harbor.
The U.S. had broken the Japanese diplomatic (and later naval)
code so the U.S. had a clear idea of Japanese's goals. After
the Japanese move into French Indochina Roosevelt froze all
Japanese assets in America and trade in effect ceased. He also
embargoed all oil exports to Japan. The British and Netherlands
governments also took similar action.
The oil embargo stunned Japan. With only about a year's supply
of petroleum on hand, Japan would either have to come to terms
with the U.S. or strike for an independent supply. Rather than
turn back Japanese leaders were prepared to take risks. As one
leader explained to the Emperor a month before Pearl Harbor,
"It is impossible from the standpoint of our domestic political
situation and of our self-preservation, to accept all of the
American demands [a complete Japanese withdrawal from China
and French Indochina]. If we miss the present opportunity to
go to war, we will have to submit to American dictation. Therefore,
I recognize that it is inevitable that we must decide to start
a war against the United States. I will put my trust in what
I have been told: namely, that things will go well in the early
part of the war; and that although we will experience increasing
difficulties as the war progresses, there is some prospect of
success."
The American government knew that Japan would attack but not
where. All signs pointed to an imminent attack upon the British-Dutch
colonies in Southeast Asia, but would Japan also strike at American
territory? If she bypassed the Philippines, the administration
was not sure that Congress would declare war. The surprise attack
upon Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 removed these uncertainties.
In a masterfully executed raid, a Japanese carrier task force
slipped undetected across the Pacific to unleash a devastating
aerial attack against the Pacific Fleet and nearby naval and
military installations. Five battleships, three cruisers, and
lesser warships were sunk or heavily damaged. The Japanese destroyed
188 aircraft and killed approximately 3,000 men. Japan lost
only 27 aircraft and six midget submarines. Fortunately for
the U.S., the three American aircraft carriers stationed at
Pearl Harbor were at sea when the raid occurred. Even so, Japan
had severely crippled American naval and air power in the Pacific
and thereby gained time to overrun her targets in Southeast
Asia.
A few days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Germany
and Italy declared war on the United States insuring their own
destruction.
Learning Objective:
Understand the war in Europe 1941-45.
During joint American and British talks held in early 1942
it was decided that the Allies would give priority to the European
theater. Germany was the most powerful of the Axis partners,
and if allowed to consolidate its hold on the Continent could
transform it into a fortress that no subsequent effort would
be able to reduce.
The greatest contribution the United States could make to the
Allied cause was to put to military use its vast industrial
plant. One year after Pearl Harbor the American production of
armaments equaled that of Germany, Italy, and Japan put together,
and by 1944 it was double that. The consumption of men and machines
in World War II was enormous. For example, during world War
II the Soviet Union received from the U.S. over 400,000 trucks,
12,000 tanks, 14,000 planes, and an large quantity of other
goods, totaling 17.5 million tons. The Soviets themselves built
approximately 100,000 tanks, 100,000 aircraft, and 175,000 artillery
pieces during war. About two thirds of this material was destroyed
in the fighting and 20 million Russians died. At first it looked
as if the Germans, with their blitzkrieg that could rapidly
penetrate an enemy's front by a large force of tanks, closely
assisted by ground-attack aircraft and followed by motorized
infantry and artillery, had found a way around the terrible
slaughter of trench warfare. Once through the front line, the
tanks would push on at high speed to the enemy's higher command
posts and vital communications centers deep in the rear and
spread chaos behind the front, which would then collapse almost
of its own accord when the troops holding it found themselves
cut off from their own headquarters and supplies.
No innovation in warfare stays a surprise for very long, and
by the middle of the war, when German forces were fighting deep
inside the Soviet Union, attrition had returned with a vengeance.
The solution to the blitzkrieg tactic of rapid penetration was
to make the defended zone deeper—many miles deep, with successive
belts of trenches, mine fields, bunkers, gun positions, and
tank traps which would slow down the armored spearheads and
eventually wear them away. This moving front caught up cities
and civilians in its maw, chewing them up as it moved along.
On the average the countries from Germany eastward, where the
fighting was most intense and prolonged, lost about 10 percent
of their populations killed (in contrast, the U.S. lost about
1/2 of 1 percent of its total population with no physical damage
to its homeland).
In 1943 and 1944 the Soviet army's casualties were 80 percent
of the forces engaged. Being an officer did not help. In general,
officer casualties in the British and American armies in the
rifle battalions that did most of the fighting were around twice
as high proportionally as the casualties among enlisted men.
The British, remembering the slaughter of World War I, wanted
to fight Germany on the periphery, combined with bombing raids
against Germany itself and the encouragement of resistance forces
in the occupied countries. Churchill was determined to let the
Continentals do their own fighting. The American military opposed
Churchill's policy, although not for political reasons, but
because they believed that the closing and tightening the ring
concept was risky rather than safe, that it would waste lives
and material rather than save them. Chief of Staff George Marshall
believed that it was very foolish to leave the Red Army to face
almost all of the German Army alone. There was a real possibility
they would be defeated. Marshall also feared that if U.S. troops
did not get involved in combat soon, the "Asia-firsters,"
with their already impressive political base in the U.S. would
be able to switch priorities and force the administration to
concentrate on the Japanese.
Thus in early 1942 a rather intense debate developed among
the Allies, and within each country, on where and when the Anglo-Americans
would first strike the Axis. The Soviet Union was being devastated
by the German army and Stalin desperately sought relief through
a second front in western Europe. Churchill with his "closing
the ring" theory, and desiring to re-establish British
political control in the Mediterranean, suggested an invasion
of French North Africa. Roosevelt had to decide. The pressures
on him, from all sides, were enormous. Roosevelt, aware of Soviet
anxiety and eager to bolster Soviet resistance, told the Soviet
Foreign minister in May, 1942, that he hoped to launch a second
front in Europe that year. The Soviets interpreted Roosevelt's
statement as a definite promise for a second front in 1942.
Yet the United States was nowhere near full mobilization, it
did not have the necessary equipment for a full scale invasion
of Europe, and its troops were green. German submarines were
sinking enormous numbers of allied ships off the North American
coast in the first half of 1942; getting supplies and men to
Europe was a difficult task. Any invasion of France would mean
heavy casualties, maybe even defeat. Roosevelt chose North Africa.
The subsequent failure of the U.S. and Great Britain to strike
across the channel in 1942 and 1943 deeply disappointed the
Soviets and heightened their suspicions of the western Allies.
The issue of a second front began to sow the seeds of the later
Cold War.
The November, 1942 North Africa invasion (operation Torch)
had far reaching implications. After the defeat of the Germans
there, it seemed logical to go into Italy and Sicily beginning
in July, 1943. These were impressive gains on the map, but it
delayed the invasion of the continent by another year and did
not contribute to any significant destruction of German power.
It was the Red Army, who in Winston Churchill's phrase, "tore
the guts out of the German army." The key battle was Stalingrad.
The importance of Stalingrad was not so much strategic as psychological.
As at Verdun in 1916, the two sides decided here to make their
supreme contest of will. After they were beaten, many Germans
for the first time realized that the war was lost.
In the spring of 1942, when operations on the Russian front
resumed, the Germans were in a favorable position. They controlled
the principal industrial and agrarian regions of the Soviet
Union. They had suffered less than a million casualties, while
inflicting 4.5 million casualties on the Red Army. They were
also entrenched near the Soviet Union's two major cities, Moscow
and Leningrad. Hitler decided once more to postpone the capture
of Moscow, and to concentrate instead on seizing the Caucasus,
where lay the Soviet Union's richest oil deposits. The Germans
failed to reach the oil-producing areas, and worst of all, they
could not reduce Stalingrad, whose capture Hitler had demanded.
The more troops they sent against it, the more troops the Soviets
committed to its defense. For Stalin, Stalingrad had a personal
significance. The city was named for him because in 1919 he
had played an active part in directing its successful defense
against the White Army. The fighting was brutal and house to
house — the Soviets lost more men in the battle of Stalingrad
than the United States lost in combat during the entire war.
Suddenly, on November 19-20, the Soviets launched a powerful
counter attack, breaking through the Hungarian, Rumanian, and
Italian units guarding the flanks of the German Sixth Army.
The German generals pleaded with Hitler for permission to stage
a breakout from the trap while there was still time, but Hitler
insisted that the troops hold on to every inch of gained ground.
Outnumbered, freezing, so short of food that some of them resorted
to cannibalism, the Germans held out for two months. Then, at
the end of January, 1943, the Sixth Army surrendered. The Soviets
captured 91,000 prisoners, 1,500 tanks, and 60,000 vehicles.
To straighten out the front after the loss of the Sixth Army,
the German army had to retreat along the entire front, giving
up most of the ground conquered the preceding spring. It was,
as Winston Churchill cautiously put it in a speech delivered
in November, 1942, "not the end, not even the beginning
of the end, but possible the end of the beginning."
Hitler was determined to hold out to the last. He counted partly
on Allied disagreements (he tried to get a separate peace with
the Soviet Union) and partly on new weapons like jet airplanes
and the V-1 cruise missile, of which 22,400 were launched (many
of which were shot down by Allied aircraft), and beginning in
September 1944, the V-2 ballistic missile, of which 1,115 fell
on London causing severe damage. As the Allied ground forces
advanced, V-1s and V-2s were increasingly fired at Antwerp,
with its great harbor. Over 15,000 people were killed and more
than 45,000 wounded from these rocket attacks.
On the eastern front the Germans undertook in July, 1943, one
more major offensive with 17 armored divisions. In the greatest
tank battle in history the Soviets repulsed the attack, and
pushed the German army back 200 miles. The best the Germans
could hence-forth hope for was simply to hold in the East. The
Soviets had twice the manpower, and two to three times the weapons
and equipment. Wherever the Germans retreated, they looted that
which was movable and dynamited or set on fire what was left,
including ancient churches and historic monuments.
On June 6, 1944, D-Day, the allied invasion of France through
Normandy occurred. The Allies landed 8 divisions (156,000 men)
on the first day, five divisions from the sea, and three airborne
divisions from the air. To bring such an army across the Channel
required 5,000 ships and 12,000 planes. Although the Germans
had 60 divisions, 11 of them armored, facing the Allies, their
preparations for the invasion were hampered by disagreements
and miscalculations. Because Hitler insisted that the entire
coast be defended, the German units were thinly dispersed. Furthermore,
the Germans were so certain the Allies would land their main
army at Calais that it concentrated there its main force, leaving
Normandy relatively unprotected. One week after D-Day the Allies
had more troops in France than did the Germans. They also had
complete mastery of the air. In late August the Allies took
Paris.
After D-Day the Allied air forces concentrated all their resources
on the destruction of Germany. Beginning in April 1942 the British,
and later the Americans, had begun the "mass bombing"
of almost every major city in Germany: 593,000 German civilians
were killed, and over 3.3 million homes destroyed. But the cost
to the attacking forces were high—46,000 British aircrew were
killed, and as much as one third of British military and civilian
manpower and industrial resources was devoted to supporting
Bomber Command in the latter years of the war.
In some cases the air attacks were huge successes. In July,
1943 in a raid on Hamburg the Allied air forces were able to
start a firestorm and kill 40,000 people in about two hours.
If they had been able to produce that result every time, bombing
would have ended the war in six months. But only once more,
at Dresden in 1945, were all the circumstances right to produce
a firestorm (135,000 dead). The usual consequences were far
less impressive. Over the whole war, the average result of a
single British bomber sortie with a seven-man crew was less
than three dead Germans—and after an average of 14 missions,
the bomber crew themselves would be dead or prisoners. Moreover,
since the damage was done piecemeal over a long period of time,
German industrial production for military purposes actually
managed to continue rising until late 1944. (Hence the appeal
of the atomic bomb — destruction of the enemy was certain,
fast, and cheap).
In July, 1944, a group of anti-Hitler conspirators attempted
to assassinate the Fuhrer and end the war. Involved in the plot
were conservative statesmen and high army officers, who had
become convinced that Hitler would bring about the total destruction
of Germany. A briefcase containing a powerful bomb was placed
at Hitler's headquarters. It exploded, but failed to kill Hitler.
The Gestapo quickly rounded up and executed the conspirators.
The Allied advance was halted only once, at the Battle of the
Bulge in December, 1944, but the Allies quickly retook the initiative,
crossing the Rhine on March 7, 1945 at the Remagen Bridge which
the Germans had neglected to destroy. At that time the Soviet
Army, with 1,250,000 men, was poised on the Oder River, 35 miles
from the eastern suburbs of Berlin. On April 30, 1945, Hitler
committed suicide. Earlier that month, Mussolini, seeking to
escape to Switzerland, was caught by a band of Italian partisans
and shot. On May 7, 1945 Germany surrendered.
Learning Objective:
Understand the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews.
On the continent of Europe Hitler was supreme and he began
to construct his "New Order." In late 1941 Jews in
German-held territories were herded into walled ghettoes and
required to wear the Star of David. After the attack on the
Soviet Union the Nazi leaders decided to commence the physical
annihilation of the 11 million European Jews. Special detachments
of the SS began to round up Jews for "evacuation."
The victims were merely told they were being shipped to points
east, where they would be relocated and employed. The shipment
was done in cattle cars, into which the Jews were herded without
food or water. Many died in transit. Upon reaching the concentration
camp they were immediately divided into two parts. One group,
consisting of able-bodied men and women, was sent to production
centers to perform heavy labor on substandard food rations.
The intention was literally to work them to death. When they
collapsed they were returned to the extermination camp for slaughter.
The other group, that judged unsuited for work—it included
all children and elderly—was sent directly to the gas chambers.
To lull suspicion these chambers were disguised as shower rooms.
The victims were told to undress and wash. As soon as they had
filled the purported shower room and the guards bolted the doors,
poison gas was injected. For 15 or 20 minutes the condemned
would choke amid inhuman struggles and shrieks. Once silence
descended, the doors were unlocked and detachments of prisoners
removed the corpses to search them for hidden valuables and
to remove gold tooth fillings. Finally, the remains were cremated.
The operation was carried out with such efficiency that at Auschwitz
alone 10,000 persons could be disposed of without a trace each
day.
On Soviet territory the Nazis did not bother to establish extermination
camps. There, detachments of the SS rounded up the Jewish inhabitants
in towns and villages, herded them into a nearby ravine or forest,
and mowed them down with machine guns. Outside large cities
giant pits were dug; the victims, lined up at the edge and shot,
fell directly into their mass graves. In Kiev alone over 30,000
Jews were massacred in such a manner in a single day.
Between 1941 and 1945 the Germans killed an estimated 6 million
Jews, a quarter of them children. This crime has no precedent
in human history. Never before had a whole ethnic or racial
group been condemned to die, for no reason and without possibility
of reprieve. Little was done to rescue those destined to die,
and in the U.S. and Great Britain there was even a tendency
to discount news of the massacres which was leaking out of occupied
Europe. There were only a few honorable exceptions to the prevailing
indifference. The Danes ferried most Danish Jews to neutral
Sweden. In Hungary, Prime Minister Horthy refused to condone
deportation proceedings and his tactics saved the lives of some
200,000 Jews; another 200,000 perished in 1944, after the Germans
occupied Hungary. The Bulgarians and the Italians resisted to
the end German pressures to hand over their Jews to the SS.
About 50,000 persons directly participated in the Jewish slaughters.
After the war only a fraction of these were ever brought to
trial, and only some 500 executed. As the Cold War developed
the United States wanted a strong and friendly West Germany
to help it in its struggle with the Soviet Union and the ex-Nazis
were allowed to quietly slip back into civilian life.
Learning Objective:
Understand the war against Japan, 1942-1945.
Immediately after their attack on Pearl Harbor the Japanese
were very successful. By the spring of 1942 the Japanese controlled
an enormous empire with a diameter of some 5,000 miles, a population
of 450 million, and a self-supporting economy.
Having achieved their immediate objectives, the Japanese were
anxious to assure the maximum security for their empire. There
predicament was not unlike that which had confronted Hitler
after the fall of France: they too had to keep moving and expanding
while the odds were in their favor. They now decided to seize
control of the eastern Pacific so as to deprive the U.S. of
naval bases, an to sever its sea route to Australia (which along
with New Zealand could then be conquered). In May, 1942 a Japanese
fleet including four of their six large, modern aircraft carriers
set sail for Midway Island. The mission of this task force was
to lure what was left of the U.S. Pacific Fleet into combat,
destroy it, and occupy the Aleutians and Midway.
The Americans had a much smaller fleet, but the U.S. had broken
the Japanese naval codes and they knew the Japanese dispositions
and intentions. In the first week of June the two fleets clashed
in the vicinity of Midway in one of the decisive naval battles
in history. American pilots won a striking victory, sinking
all four of the Japanese carriers. The U.S. lost one carrier,
but it had four remaining and 13 under construction, whereas
Japan lagged hopelessly in the naval construction race. (During
the whole Pacific War, Japan commissioned 14 carriers of all
types, the U.S. 104). At Midway Japan lost air and naval superiority
in the Pacific.
In August 1942 American marines attacked Guadalcanal in the
Solomon Islands. Badly hampered by the policy of "Europe
first"—only 15 percent of Allied resources were going
to fight the war in the Pacific in early 1943—the Americans
and the Australians nevertheless began "island hopping"
toward Japan. Japanese forces were on the defensive. Because
of disputes between the army (under General Douglas MacArthur)
and the navy (under Admiral Chester Nimitz) a two pronged attack
was aimed at the Japanese Islands. The army went the southern
route and the navy went the northern route. The southern islands
could have been bypassed but MacArthur's pledge of "I shall
return" to the Philippines created too much political pressure
to be ignored. The two axes of advance did assist each other
by making it increasingly difficult for the Japanese, with their
shrinking resources, to block either one with a concentration
of forces which could only be attained by opening an enormous
gap for the other axes to push through.
The war demanded greater and greater sacrifices from the Japanese
people. American fire-bomb raids brought terrible suffering
to the already under-nourished and disease-prone urban population.
An incendiary raid on Tokyo, March 10, 1945 killed over 100,000
people. Cities across the country were laid waste by American
bombers.
At the time of Germany's capitulation, American troops, having
seized Iwo Jima and Okinawa, were at Japan's doorstep. The Allied
command overestimated the Japanese willingness and capacity
to fight. It was thought, on the basis of the experience gained
in reducing Japanese-held islands where the Japanese fought
to the death, that an invasion and occupation of Japan would
cost a million casualties.
In the summer of 1944 Japanese leadership began organizing
suicide formations on a large scale. At a time when Japanese
pilots received inadequate training and flew inferior planes
against better trained and more experienced American pilots
in superior airplanes, and when the massing of anti-aircraft
fire from large concentrations of Allied warships made possible
the throwing up a huge volume of fire, battle sorties by Japanese
planes were ever more likely to end in their being shot down
without having either brought down any American planes or damaging
any Allied warship. With suicide missions not many more Japanese
planes would be lost, but it was assumed that there would at
least be something to show for the sacrifice. By the end of
the Okinawa campaign there had been 2,550 kamikaze missions
of which 475 had secured hits or damaging near misses. The Japanese
held back over 5,000 planes to meet the forthcoming invasion
of the home islands.
In fact, however, the Japanese in the spring of 1945 were desperately
seeking a way out of the war, and were putting out in vain a
succession of peace feelers. One of these, sent through the
Soviet Union (then still at peace with Japan), Stalin never
even forwarded to Washington. This miscalculation of Japanese
power helps explain Allied political and military strategy in
defeating Japan. At the Tehran and Yalta conferences between
the "big three" powers, Stalin had promised that he
would come into the war against Japan three months after the
defeat of Germany (he needed that time to rest his troops and
move them from the western front to the east). At Yalta Stalin
asked for and obtained from Roosevelt and Churchill Soviet possession
of the Kuriles and southern Sakhalin, a naval base at Port Arthur
in Manchuria, joint ownership and management with China of the
Manchurian railways, and recognition of Outer Mongolia as a
Soviet-controlled area (China also claimed the area). FDR, without
consulting China, promised to obtain Chiang Kai-shek's acceptance
of these terms. The terms were kept secret from China.
It was clear that the Soviet Union would enter the war when
its interests made it desirable. The question, therefore, was
not if the Soviet Union should enter the war but when and under
what circumstances. Certainly Yalta gave the Soviets nothing
they would not have taken anyhow, except possibly the Kuriles.
Yalta in that sense was an attempt to ensure that the Soviet
Union came into the war at a time most advantageous to the Americans,
and to limit its subsequent expansion.
President Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, at Warm Springs,
Georgia from a stroke, six months after his election to a fourth
term, and vice president Harry S. Truman became president of
the U.S.. FDR had woefully neglected to keep Truman informed
of his diplomacy and the development of the atomic bomb. The
U.S. government began the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic
bomb in June, 1942 after warnings from refugee scientists that
they suspected Germany was working to develop an atomic bomb.
In July, 1945 the first atomic bomb was detonated in the New
Mexico desert. On August 6, 1945 the first atomic bomb was dropped
on Hiroshima, and 87,500 people were killed in less than five
minutes by a single aircraft carrying a single bomb. On August
9, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and another 39,000
humans died. Between these two atomic raids the Soviet Union
declared war on Japan, occupying virtually without resistance
Manchuria and Korea. At this point the Emperor personally intervened
to express his will that the Japanese surrender. On August 15
he broadcast an Imperial decree enjoining the Japanese people
to bear the unbearable and to surrender with decorum. The broadcast
was met with an emotional combination of relief and anguish:
the war was over, but Japan was to be occupied by enemy soldiers
for the first time in its history.
Scientifically the atomic bomb was an advance into unknown
territory, but militarily it was seen simply as a more cost-effective
and efficient way of attaining a goal that was already a central
part of strategy: a means of producing the results achieved
at Hamburg and Dresden cheaply and reliably every time the weapon
was used. Even at the time, the $2 billion cost of the Manhattan
Project was dwarfed by the cost of trying to destroy cities
the hard way, using conventional bombs. And there was no moral
question in most people's mind about the ethics of using weapons
of mass destruction against defenseless cities; that question
had effectively been settled by the first Zeppelin raid of World
War I. The week before the atomic bombings more than 100,000
Japanese had been killed in conventional air raids. With predicitons
that America might suffer as many as a half a million casualties
in an invasion of Japan, atomic weapons were seen as a cheap
and easy way to end the war — and in the process pay the Japanese
back for their attack on Pearl Harbor. Atomic weapons were also
seen by some decision makers in the American government as a
way of ending the war quickly before the Soviet Union could
gain too much territory in Asia.
The grim balance of World War II was 60 million dead. Europe,
China, Japan and the Soviet Union lay in rubble, many of their
great cities leveled to the ground. World War II destroyed Europe's
wealth and influence. After the war, for the next 50 years,
two "super powers"—the United States and the Soviet
Union—would have a "Cold War" with each other to
see who would dominate the Earth.
Learning Objective:
Understand the domestic policy of the United States during World
War II.
The U.S. had begun to mobilize even prior to World War II.
By December 1941, more than 1.5 million men were in uniform.
By the end of the war, 15 million Americans were in the armed
forces. World War II was the most expensive war the U.S. has
ever fought. It cost $560 billion and the national debt rose
from $48 billion in 1941 to $247 billion in 1945 (the cost of
World War I was $66 billion; the cost of Vietnam War was $121.5
billion). Although many Americans did not like to admit it,
World War II was an economic blessing. For the first time since
the early 1930s, jobs were available. Real wages rose 50 percent
during the war and prices rose only moderately. Businessmen,
who's image had been tarnished by the Great Depression, were
now essential for victory. Many of them became $1 a year men
working for the government insuring that their corporations
benefitted from wartime government expenditures.
The size of the federal government grew rapidly, from 1.1 million
civilian employees in 1940 to 3.3 million in 1945. Inevitably
there was waste, inefficiency, and corruption, but by 1943 the
system was rolling along in high gear. In 1944 alone, 96,000
airplanes were built by Americans. Henry J. Kaiser perfected
an assembly line for producing simple freighters, the so-called
Liberty ships. By 1943, Kaiser shipyards were building one a
day — a total of 10 million tons of shipping were constructed
during the war.
During the war, the government encouraged women to move into
jobs previously held by men. Even though the women were paid
less than men for doing the same work this was the beginning
of the trend of women moving into the labor market. After the
war, the government was worried about jobs for the returning
veterans and women were encouraged to return to their homes.
The armed forces and American society remained segregated.
But the shortage of labor created opportunities for blacks.
Blacks moved out of the South. By 1950, approximately one-third
of America's black population lived outside the South. This
migration created a national racial problem. Racial tensions
mounted, especially over access to housing and public facilities
in the swollen industrial areas of the large cities. During
the summer of 1943, the emotions exploded from coast to coast
in series of violent racial encounters. The worst of the riots
occurred in Detroit, a primary center of war production, where
500,000 newcomers, including 60,000 blacks, had been squeezed
in since 1940. In June 1943, a fight between teenage whites
and blacks ignited two days of fighting and widespread looting.
Twenty-five blacks and nine whites were killed, hundreds wounded,
and millions of dollars of property lost.
Unlike World War I there was no significant opposition to the
war — Pearl Harbor had united the nation. Because disloyalty
was rare, there were no volunteer super-patriotic leagues, no
high powered propaganda campaigns, and no war madness. The government
did impose censorship, but it was restrained and based primarily
on military security requirements. The one great blot on Roosevelt's
otherwise good civil liberties record during the war was the
detention and forced removal of Japanese-Americans from the
West coast to internment camps in the interior.
In a matter of weeks 112,000 people of Japanese decent were
imprisoned; of these 71,000 were American citizens. In many
cases, the internees lost their property (in all, $350 million
was lost). In Korematsu v. United States (1944) the
Supreme Court upheld the evacuation on the ground that military
leaders are justified in taking extreme measures against persons
on account of race to protect national security, even though
the situation was not serious enough to justify imposition of
martial law. Not one act of treason was ever proven during the
war against a person of Japanese ancestry living in America,
and 17,000 Hawaiian Nisei (American-born Japanese) and several
thousand more from the mainland fought against the Germans in
Europe with great distinction. In 1988 Congress formally apologized
to the internees and paid each survivor $20,000.
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Courtesy of George Burson, Aspen School District,
Aspen, Colorado.
