A Survey of USA: ----- World War II

Prof. Niangen Huang

World War II

The Depression that hit the United States in the 1930s soon spread all over the capitalist world. It was unquestionably a major factor in bringing about Nazism and World War II.

The economic crisis ruined the confidence of Europeans in their parliamentary institutions and drove millions of them to despair.

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Making use of such a serious situation, Mussolini and Hitler established Fascist dictatorships in Italy and Germany respectively.

Benito Mussolini had dreams of building a Roman Empire while Adolph Hitler embarked on a program of German territorial expansion in Europe.

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These two dictators were destined to destroy the Versailles system and to eventually dominate Europe.

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The global depression also brought Japan under the sway of its military faction. They believed that the country's

prosperity and prestige in the world could be attained only through force.

Their ambitious aim was to conquer China and Southeast Asia, thereby to drive the Western powers out of the Orient.

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In September 1931 the Japanese army invaded Northeast China using a railway bomb explosion as a pretext.

In 1937 the Japanese invaders enlarged their aggression into North China and this started the all-round War of Resistance against Japan by the Chinese people.

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As the aggressions of Germany, Italy, and Japan were expanded, the U. S. government tried to maintain its isolationism. Between 1935 and 1937, Congress

passed three Neutrality Acts which prohibited the sale of munitions and the lending of money to nations at war.

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These neutrality laws not only abandoned America's traditional policy of freedom of the seas, but soon proved to be an aid to aggressor nations.

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In reality, the isolationism of the United States encouraged Nazi Germany and Adolph Hitler to believe

that they could rely on American neutrality in the coming war;

that this time their victims could not make loans or buy munitions in the United States.

It also gave the leaders of Japan further reason to believe that the flabby and pacifist United States would not fight for the Open Door or the integrity of China.

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World War II finally erupted in 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland.

The U.S. Congress repealed the arms embargo and substituted a “cash-and-carry" policy: that belligerents trading with American

merchants transport their goods in foreign vessels

that the goods be paid for before they left American ports.

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In 1940, when Franklin Roosevelt won his unprecedented try for a third term as president was almost every country in western Europe was virtually defeated in a blitzkrieg by Hitler.

World War II In Asia Japan's invasion of China and

infiltration into Indochina had showed clearly that Japan's expansionist policy aimed at domination of the entire Far East and the Pacific.

In September, 1940, the Tripartite Pact was signed in Berlin binding Germany, Italy and Japan together, and thus the formation of the fascist military bloc was completed.

World War II All these events convinced most Americans of the need

to bring about Germany's defeat. In 1940, the United States began a gigantic naval

program; with 200 new warships she aimed at naval superiority in both Atlantic and Pacific; In August of the same year, the first peacetime draft in U.S. history was enacted, under which about 1.6 million men were conscripted during the following year.

In March, 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act,

authorizing $ 7 billion for supplies to aid the Allies.

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After Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June, 1941, lend-lease aid was extended to the Soviets. In President Roosevelt's words, this act made the republic the arsenal of world democracy. However, this act helped the fighting against fascism.

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When the United States was taking steps to help the Allies, Japan suddenly attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. This made America formally enter the war.

World War II This sudden blow gave the Japanese

naval control of, the Western Pacific. Quickly they captured the Philippine Islands and most of Southeast Asia, but they were checked by an American fleet in June 1942 at the battle of Midway. Thereafter they made no important advances, while America gradually collected strength for a counterattack.

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The Movie: Pearl Harbor

World War II Grand strategy, however, directed the main

American effort first against the Germans. In November 1942, a joint U.S. - British

force landed in North Africa; by the following May that region had been cleared of the enemy.

In July 1943, they invaded Sicily and, after swiftly, overrunning that island, landed on the Italian mainland in September

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In July 1943, the King of Italy, with support of the army, had removed Mussolini from his post as Italian Prime Minister and the new government quickly made peace with the allies and declared war on Germany.

World War II On June 6, 1944, American and British

forces, under the supreme command of the American General Eisenhower, landed in Normandy on the coast of France gradually pushed the Germans back.

World War II Paris was liberated in August, and by the be

ginning of 1945 the allied forces were advancing into Germany itself.

From the east, the Russians were steadily advancing.

By the middle of 1944 they had driven the enemy form most of their own territory; and by April, 1945, the Russian were outside Berlin.

World War II On April 30, 1945, Hitler committed s

uicide. A week later the Germans surrendere

d. The war in Europe was over. Less than a month earlier, on April 12,

President Roosevelt had died of a stroke

World War II Beginning with the Potsdam ultimatu

m, which ordered Japan to surrender or face complete annihilation, a series of significant events brought an early end to the war.

World War II On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bo

mb devastated the important Japanese base at Hiroshima.

On August 8, Russia, fulfilling a previous agreement, declared war upon Japan, and a Soviet army of more than one million men crossed the Chinese border.

World War II On August 9, another atomic bomb w

as dropped on Nagasaki. Next day Japan offered to surrender, on condition that the Emperor was to remain untouched. The allies agreed.

The surrender was proclaimed on August 14, and the Second World War ended.

World War II During the war, the United States gav

e the Allies many of the weapons and supplies they needed to fight Germany and Japan. From June 1940 until the Japanese surrender, the United States built over 300,000 aircraft and 86,000 tanks. About 50 million Americans participated in the war; over a million of them were killed or wounded.