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Further Reading

World War II

World War II (1939-1945) was the largest armed conflict in human history. Ranging over six continents and all the world's oceans, the war caused an estimated 50 million military and civilian deaths, including those of 6 million Jews. Global in scale and in its repercussions, World War II created a new world at home and abroad. Among its major results were the beginning of the nuclear era, increased pressure to decolonize the Third World, and the advent of the Cold War. The war also ended America's relative isolation from the rest of the world and resulted in the creation of the United Nations. Domestically, the war ended the Great Depression as hundreds of thousands of people, many of them women, went into the defense industries. At the same time, African Americans made significant strides toward achieving their political, economic and social rights.

The roots of World War II, which eventually pitted Germany, Japan, and Italy (the Axis) against the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union (the Allies), lay in the militaristic ideologies and expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan. The weak response of the European democracies to fascist aggression and American isolationism allowed the Axis powers to gain the upper hand initially.

Germany, Italy, and Japan embarked on an unchecked series of invasions during the late 1930s. Hitler and Mussolini supported the Spanish Falangists in their successful civil war against the "Loyalist" Spanish government (1937-39). Although many Europeans and North Americans considered the Spanish Civil War an opportunity to destroy Fascism, the United States, Great Britain, and France remained neutral; only Russia supported the Loyalists. To the shock of those who admired Russia for its active opposition to Fascism, Stalin and Hitler signed a nonaggression pact in August 1939.

Although the war began with Nazi Germany's attack on Poland in September, 1939, the United States did not enter the war until after the Japanese bombed the American fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. Between those two events, President Franklin Roosevelt worked hard to prepare Americans for a conflict that he regarded as inevitable. In November 1939, he persuaded Congress to repeal the arms embargo provisions of the neutrality law so that arms could be sold to France and Britain. After the fall of France in the spring of June 1940, he pushed for a major military buildup and began providing aid in the form of Lend-Lease to Britain, which now stood alone against the Axis powers. America, he declared, must become "the great arsenal of democracy." From then on, America's capacity to produce hundreds of thousands of tanks, airplanes, and ships for itself and its allies proved a crucial factor in Allied success, as did the fierce resistance of the Soviet Union, which had joined the war in June, 1941 after being attacked by Germany. The brilliance of America's military leaders, including General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who planned and led the attack against the Nazis in Western Europe, and General Douglas MacArthur and Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, who led the Allied effort in the Pacific, also contributed to the Allied victory.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, wartime conferences focused on establishing a second front. During World War II, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin needed help from President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Despite Stalin's agreement with the German dictator Adolph Hitler, German forces were attacking the Soviet Union. On August 13, 1942, Stalin wrote a memorandum to Roosevelt and Churchill opposing their decision not to invade Western Europe at that time. Stalin wanted the Americans and British to distract the Germans in Russia by fighting them on another front, Western Europe. Just a few months after Stalin's letter, Great Britain and the United States (who were already fighting in the South Pacific) entered Africa to fight the Germans.

From early 1942 through much of 1943, the Grand Alliance was on the defensive. Even after the Soviet Union began to advance after its victory at Stalingrad, the Western powers were unable to establish a major second front in Western Europe. Whether the alliance could hold together, or whether the Soviet Union might make a separate peace, was uncertain.

At Casablanca in January 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to fight until the Axis powers surrendered unconditionally. In a November 1943 meeting in Egypt with Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to a preeminent role for China in post-war Asia. The next major wartime conference included Roosevelt, Churchill, and the leader of the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin. Meeting at Tehran following the Cairo Conference, the "Big Three" secured confirmation on the launching of the cross-channel invasion and a promise from Stalin that the Soviet Union would eventually enter the war against Japan.

Among the war's major turning points for the United States were the Battle of Midway (1942). But it was not until 1943 that the American and British forces would invade Italy. Then, on June 6, 1944, D-Day, the Americans and British invaded Western Europe on the beaches of Normandy, France almost one year after the German army began its retreat from Russia. The war ended with the Axis Powers' unconditional surrender in 1945.

In February 1945, the "Big Three" met at the former Russian czar's summer palace in the Crimea. Yalta was the most important and by far the most controversial of the wartime meetings. Recognizing the strong position that the Soviet Army possessed on the ground, Churchill and an ailing Roosevelt agreed to a number of compromises with Stalin that allowed Soviet hegemony to remain in Poland and other Eastern European countries, granted territorial concessions to the Soviet Union, and outlined punitive measures against Germany, including an occupation and reparations in principle. Stalin did guarantee that the Soviet Union would declare war on Japan within 6 months. The last meeting of the "Big Three" occurred at Potsdam in July 1945, where the tension that would erupt into the Cold War was evident. Despite the end of the war in Europe and the revelation of the existence of the atomic bomb to the Allies, neither President Harry Truman, Roosevelt's successor, nor Clement Atlee, who mid-way through the conference replaced Churchill, could come to agreement with Stalin on any but the most minor issues. The most significant agreement was the issuance of the Potsdam Declaration to Japan demanding an immediate and unconditional surrender and threatening Japan with destruction if they did not comply. With the Axis forces defeated, the wartime alliance soon devolved into suspicion and bitterness on both sides.