World War 2: A Historian's Godzilla
Writer's block, cold sweats, and heavy doses of self doubt are the bounty of a lowly adjunct's decision to write a brief article outlining the American experience in World War 2. Here is a snippet of my thinking pattern over the past few days:
"Surely the chapter does a decent job…maybe I should just assign that…How can anyone summarize such an epic conflict…I have a 10 DVD set that sets out to do just the same and it can't cover everything…But you can't sit and not do anything… You need to do something…It would be kind of neat to try…Arghhh…It's just too big…Surely the chapter does a decent enough job…What is on TV?"
There are some parts of this story that need to be highlighted. The name of the war is essentially correct—it was a global conflict that directly consumed 70 million lives in the six years (1939-1945, although China and Japan began their part of war in 1937) of the conflict. The conflict flowed from the inadequacies of the peace that ended the first World War. The experience of the conflict fundamentally changed the world and the United States. A giant gamble, Old World power brokers France and Great Britain found their countries weakened and diminished while facing a colonial world questioning the established order of things, sometimes violently. At the end of the war, former adversaries Germany and Japan grew in stature and influence because of a bizarre tension between the two big winners of the conflict and former allies, the United States and the USSR.
Roots in World War 1
The humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles, with its war guilt clause and demand that Germany pay the entire cost of the war, contorted politics and society in postwar Germany. A fledgling democracy called the Wiemar Republic was unable to maintain control over the more extreme elements in Germany. Many viewed the Treaty as evidence that the world wanted to betray the possibility of a great and powerful Germany and some savvy politicians used this as emotional appeal to increase their power within the government.
The powerful political doctrine of fascism, introduced in Italy and perfected in Germany, would initially provide a sense of order and competence in a world full of uncertainty and disorder. Essentially, fascism is the organization of all parts of society (such as religion, industry, education, voluntary organizations) to serve the needs of the state. Those needs are determined by a dictator who controls the entire government. Any opposition is aggressively targeted and punished. Empire and glory are the goals of fascists, resulting in an aggressively expansionistic foreign policy. In Italy, Benito Mussolini used private armies of thugs called black shirts to intimidate his opponents and manipulate the public into a position of power. From this position of power, he brought a degree of order to Italian public life that had never been seen before, the persecution of anyone who disagreed with him, and war (with Ethiopia—yeah, Ethiopia; it was literally muskets against tanks) to expand Italy into a new Mediterranean empire.
In Germany, a watchful Adolf Hitler studied Mussolini and worked to implement the same in Germany. Since black shirts were already taken, his private armies of brown shirts, or SA, provided a violent exclamation point to his heady diatribes against the enemies of Germany, most especially the Jews (who represented ½ of 1% of the German population). Violent attacks on Germany's democracy were carried out by the brown shirts and then, disingenuously blamed on the Communists and Jews whose fault it surely was not. In this way, Hitler terrorized his way into the highest position of power in Germany, from which, like Yertle in Yertle the Turtle, he concluded his empire was not big enough. Then the world paid because he was not just a dreamer.
He wanted to create a Third Reich, or another German empire. His idea was that there should be many Germans, since they were the best kind of people. All these people would need space. Germany would use its strength to take land from the peoples to the east in places like Poland and the USSR. The people living there were inferior to Germans the way bugs are to people, so the best thing to do to the people living there would be to work them to death building a greater German state until they were exterminated. Then there would be plenty of space.
The first step was to militarize. The second was to unify German lands. The Treaty required Germany to avoid having things like air forces, large armies, and really big weapons. The problem was the Treaty was not going to enforce itself. The two countries who were most interested in maintaining Germany in its post-Treaty weakened state were Britain and France and, ultimately, neither of these two countries could make Germany do anything unless they were willing to use force. They were not. Scarred by war and intimidated by a naked, anemic Germany, both countries would spend the last five years before the war broke out scared by their own shadows. First, they looked away when German remilitarized. Great Britain and France acquiesced when Germany reclaimed some of its territory in 1935 (essentially armed with confidence and mean-looking expressions rather than actual weapons, the German soldiers were under instructions to retreat upon ANY sign of resistance. There was no resistance). The unification of Austria and Germany occurred in 1938. Hitler then made a play for Czechoslovakia, a highly industrialized, high-functioning democracy created in the aftermath of World War 1. The Nazis (Hitler's party; found in many countries) said Germans in Czechoslovakia were being mistreated and that the territory where they were being mistreated, the Sudetenland, should be handed over to Germany. Hitler "allowed" Britain and France to attempt to mediate this completely false allegation and pitched many a fist-waving, shirt-rending fit to ensure Britain and France were aware how important this all was to himself, Germany's dignity, and justice. Appalled the way a parent is at a grocery store when the two year old makes an ugly scene demanding candy, they simply wanted Germany to quit making such a big scene. So, while Czechoslovakia waited outside, Britain and France relented and gave Germany its treat—a large part of Czech territory to which Germany had no claim and the lesson that if Germany wants something, Germany can take it and there is no one that will get in the way. This was called the policy of appeasement. It didn't work.
A few months later, Hitler began making the same demands about Poland. On August 14, Germany and the Soviet Union, two countries that REALLY despised each other (think Biggie v. Tupac kind of hate) announced they had signed a non-aggression pact (they hated each other so much they could not even call it a peace treaty). On September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland which lay right in between Germany and the Soviet Union (Three weeks later, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the other side).
The War In Europe
Great Britain and France declare war on September 3, 1939, but it did not matter because the Germans introduced a new twist on warfare called the blitzkrieg. Before, when soldiers met each other on the battlefield, they would shoot at each other because they seemed, well, natural targets for bullets. The Germans decided to put as many soldiers as they could on tanks and trucks and drive past the opposing soldiers and go after the communications and command areas in the rear of the battlefield. That was like cutting a chicken’s head off. The body (soldiers in the field) might still be moving, but there was nothing there to tell it what to do. All the Germans had to do was wait until the body figured it out and then it was dinner time (no picture here, kids; I’ll let your imagination do the work).
This worked so well that the Germans would do it again. In 1940, they took control of Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and France (Hitler would force the French to surrender in the train car where the Germans surrendered in World War 1). In 1941, it was Greece, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union. By the beginning of 1942, it Germany was fully in control of continental Europe. The Germans also attempted to invade Britain, but because of a technological development, radar, Brits were able to focus their meager Royal Air Force to defend the island. Hitler decided to bomb the daylights out of Britain and consolidate control in the areas they occupied.
In the areas under their control, they unleashed a nightmare that one thought only possible in works of horror. They used slaves culled from the populations under their control for labor, brutally slaughtered whole villages to the east, and introduced the Holocaust, or the attempted genocide of the European Jews. In many places, Germans soldiers had been greeted as liberators from the oppressive Soviet Union, complete with young women throwing flowers at the troops. The Germans responded to this by gathering those they could capture into the village churches and setting it on fire. Over six million Jews and many other undesirables (Homosexuals, gypsies, the disabled) would be coldly, methodically murdered away from any battlefield.
The War in the Pacific
The key to the war in the Pacific lie with the unique position of Japan. An island nation, they had industrialized and modernized in the late 1800s while watching European countries take control of the rest of Asia. An industrial nation requires certain resources such as oil and steel, which Japan lacked in significant amounts. Concluding that buying these resources was for chumps, they set out to establish a regional empire that would ensure the continuous replenishment of these resources. They began by invading northern China in the late 1930s. As the war progressed, they came into conflict with the other regional power in the area and a major petroleum supplier, the United States. The United States held a colony, the Philippines, and stationed their massive Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The United States had promised Japan that if they continued their expansionist course, the United States would cut off their petroleum supplies. Japan, viewing war as inevitable, decided that they should strike the first blow. Japan’s war plan called for simultaneous attacks throughout the Pacific, grabbing as much territory as possible while attempting to destroy the only entity capable of stopping them, the US Pacific Fleet. They would then, they strategized, fight holding actions and wait for the fat, lazy Americans to tire of war and call for some sort of negotiated peace in which Japan might not get everything they wanted, but some. The Americans were, after all, reasonable people, right?
The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor occurred in the hangover-saturated atmosphere of a naval base on a Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. Concerned about sabotage from the island’s many residents of Japanese descent, the planes were lined up for easy monitoring. This also meant easy pickings for Japanese pilots, who also sunk most of the battleships stationed in the harbor. The destruction also created over 5000 American deaths and awakened a groggy but powerful giant, the United States. President Franklin Roosevelt announced that the day would live infamy and asked Congress for a declaration of war, which came. On the other side of the world, the British, alone in their battle against an unstoppable German force, breathed a thankful sigh, knowing they were no longer so alone.
The Homefront
Soldiers, sailors, and marines of the United States military would serve their country in a wide variety of environments—the parched deserts of North Africa, the tropical swamps of Pacific islands, the rocky mountains of Italy, the manicured hedgerows of France, the waters of the world’s oceans. Over 16 million would serve and over 400,000 would make the ultimate sacrifice. However, when looking at the scale of human sacrifice of World War 2, the Soviet Union would lose over 30 million of its citizens, China, 10 million, the United States’ contribution was not in blood. The United States contributed the trinkets of war for its Allies’ militaries through a program called Lend-Lease which allowed the president to supply any military effort he thought necessary for the defense of the nation. As a result, the United States quickly turned into a massive, protected nation of factories building the things that those countries in midst of the chaos and upheaval of survival could not build for themselves. In addition, the United States, with its penchant for mechanical tinkering, devised innumerable technological solutions to the challenges of this war, although its final contribution was so dramatically game changing that the world continues to deal with the aftermath.
Factories stayed open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Industrial plants built with consumer comforts in mind, reequipped to make weapons of war. The nation rationed its intake of the materials for war, including rubber, nylon (ladies would draw a line down their legs to make it look like they were wearing hose), gasoline, and even food (margarine was introduced as a completely unacceptable substitute for butter, much to the lasting chagrin of the Greatest Generation). Women were coaxed into leaving their homes and contributing to the war effort through factory work, fat paychecks, and a freedom that was difficult to leave behind once the war was over. This industrial effort in a resource rich nation produced an economy that never fully converted to a war-time economy. The United States found a way to build the weapons of war for its massive military, the militaries of its Allies, and still had room to make a few consumer goods along the way which meant that the United States had discovered the key to having both guns and butter (well, not butter exactly) for first time since the introduction of total war.
Fortunately for the United States, and her allies, Hitler had persecuted virtually the entire European scientific community. These scientists found refuge, collaborators, and funding for their revenge. The most famous example of technological innovation during World War 2, was the Manhattan Project, which began as a letter of warning to Franklin Roosevelt about German efforts to unlock the power of the atom for war from none other than Albert Einstein himself. The American government funneled incredible resources into the development of an atomic weapon for itself. The first weapon (of three built) was exploded in the deserts of New Mexico in the summer of 1945; scientists who bet New Mexico would be incinerated lost but the weapon was powerful enough that people saw the flash of the bomb 150 miles away. The President, Harry Truman (FDR had died in April), was unaware of the project but delighted at its outcome when informed.
The Tide Turns
Fighting in the Pacific challenged the physical, mental, and emotional resources of all involved. In order to secure territory, American soldiers and marines had to repeatedly attempt amphibious landings on the beaches of the islands in the Pacific, while the fleet of American aircraft carriers provided protection and cleared the shipping lanes. Once the men landed, they faced clearing the heavily fortified island of the enemy which believed an honorable death preferable to a dishonorable capture. During the Battle of Peleliu, 10,000 Japanese soldiers died while only 202 were captured. During the Aleutian campaign, over 4000 Japanese died, while none were taken prisoner. This, like the notion the Japanese had that the United States might submit to a negotiated peace, was one of the more tragic misunderstandings in the war. Soldiers from the Pacific conflict would occasionally reflect on the fact that the enemy refused to give up, even once the cause was clearly lost, displaying anger at having to fight people who demanded that the end always resulted in more death.
The Americans devised a strategy called island-hopping. The idea was to bypass heavily fortified islands, choosing instead more lightly defended islands and building airstrips from which to slowly make their way toward the home islands. This, along with concurrent campaigns in the Philippines, Indochina, and China, slowly wore the Japanese down and, predictably, drained their resources. American strategists began contemplating an invasion of the home islands in order to force an unconditional surrender. Their casualty estimates for both friend and foe were beyond anything the United States had ever experienced in warfare: over two million Allied casualties during the battle was a common estimate (remember the US lost 400,000 during the entire war).
The battle in Europe turned in 1943 with the end of the Battle of Stalingrad in the Soviet Union. The Germans had become unraveled in the vast, freezing expanse of the Russian steppes, trying to follow the increasingly maniacal rantings of Der Furhrer that substituted for solid military strategy and planning while fighting an enemy that understood the fundamental reality of the war—extermination. German retreat began and the myriad ethnicities targeted for destruction in order to create living space for a superior race united with the Russian soldiers to make sure the retreating armies were made to suffer.
The United States and Great Britain made attempts to assist their Russian ally in 1942 and 1943 by opening campaigns at the Italians and Germans in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. While effective at seasoning overenthusiastic, naïve soldiers, these campaigns were strategic afterthoughts and the Russian ally knew it and pressured the US and Great Britain to relieve the stress on the Soviet Union and open another front on the continent. A large moving city of ships, men, and guns crept as quietly as a moving city could and landed on four beaches in France in June 1944. The Germans fought back fiercely, but the Allies managed to maintain a hold on the continent. With that, and the ability of the Allies to bring war to the continent, meant the end for Germany. It would take a year for the Americans, British, and other soldiers to meet the Russians in Berlin but it did happen. The Germans, after Hitler and his inner circle committed suicide, surrendered on May 8, 1945.
In the Pacific, the war continued. The US military continued planning for its invasion of the Japanese home islands, moving the last chess piece into place by invading nearby Okinawa in April 1945. News from the Trinity testing site in New Mexico presented the President with an option for avoiding the invasion. No one fully understood what this new atomic weapon meant, but they still had two and it seemed like they should try that before throwing a bunch of Americans into a meat grinder. So, on August 6, 1945, after an opaque warning to the Japanese that the Americans had a new weapon of unimaginable destruction, the United States Air Force quietly flow over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. In one second, 80,000 people were dead. Others, suffering from a mysterious illness and dealing with the chaos of living in a place that was destroyed in an instant, would die later. The Japanese, still proud, still wanting their sole condition of surrender--protection of the Emperor—to be met, were attempting to surrender, largely by hoping the Soviet Union would deliver their messages to the Americans. Two days later, keeping a commitment made to the US and eyeing territory and power in Asia, the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan. The next day, a little amazed that Japan still had not surrendered, the United States dropped their last atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki. This time, because of the geography of the town, only 40,000 casualties were reported. The Japanese, devastated and destroyed, officially surrendered a week later.
World War 2 ended September 2, 1945. Ask any American alive in the middle of 1942 if what they thought the outcome of the war would be, they most certainly would not have imagined what did happen. The war generated more problems than it resolved. Great Britain and France would lose their colonial empires and the attendant power and esteem that goes along with being a successful imperialist. The emergence of the United States’ atomic bomb and the sacrifice of the Soviet Union combined to set the countries at each other’s throats in an incredibly risky chase for security from the other. The United States, looking for allies in their conflict with the USSR, decided to rebuild both Japan and Germany (well, part of it) into modern, democratic states that became stabilizers in their respective regions and American allies.
"Surely the chapter does a decent job…maybe I should just assign that…How can anyone summarize such an epic conflict…I have a 10 DVD set that sets out to do just the same and it can't cover everything…But you can't sit and not do anything… You need to do something…It would be kind of neat to try…Arghhh…It's just too big…Surely the chapter does a decent enough job…What is on TV?"
There are some parts of this story that need to be highlighted. The name of the war is essentially correct—it was a global conflict that directly consumed 70 million lives in the six years (1939-1945, although China and Japan began their part of war in 1937) of the conflict. The conflict flowed from the inadequacies of the peace that ended the first World War. The experience of the conflict fundamentally changed the world and the United States. A giant gamble, Old World power brokers France and Great Britain found their countries weakened and diminished while facing a colonial world questioning the established order of things, sometimes violently. At the end of the war, former adversaries Germany and Japan grew in stature and influence because of a bizarre tension between the two big winners of the conflict and former allies, the United States and the USSR.
Roots in World War 1
The humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles, with its war guilt clause and demand that Germany pay the entire cost of the war, contorted politics and society in postwar Germany. A fledgling democracy called the Wiemar Republic was unable to maintain control over the more extreme elements in Germany. Many viewed the Treaty as evidence that the world wanted to betray the possibility of a great and powerful Germany and some savvy politicians used this as emotional appeal to increase their power within the government.
The powerful political doctrine of fascism, introduced in Italy and perfected in Germany, would initially provide a sense of order and competence in a world full of uncertainty and disorder. Essentially, fascism is the organization of all parts of society (such as religion, industry, education, voluntary organizations) to serve the needs of the state. Those needs are determined by a dictator who controls the entire government. Any opposition is aggressively targeted and punished. Empire and glory are the goals of fascists, resulting in an aggressively expansionistic foreign policy. In Italy, Benito Mussolini used private armies of thugs called black shirts to intimidate his opponents and manipulate the public into a position of power. From this position of power, he brought a degree of order to Italian public life that had never been seen before, the persecution of anyone who disagreed with him, and war (with Ethiopia—yeah, Ethiopia; it was literally muskets against tanks) to expand Italy into a new Mediterranean empire.
In Germany, a watchful Adolf Hitler studied Mussolini and worked to implement the same in Germany. Since black shirts were already taken, his private armies of brown shirts, or SA, provided a violent exclamation point to his heady diatribes against the enemies of Germany, most especially the Jews (who represented ½ of 1% of the German population). Violent attacks on Germany's democracy were carried out by the brown shirts and then, disingenuously blamed on the Communists and Jews whose fault it surely was not. In this way, Hitler terrorized his way into the highest position of power in Germany, from which, like Yertle in Yertle the Turtle, he concluded his empire was not big enough. Then the world paid because he was not just a dreamer.
He wanted to create a Third Reich, or another German empire. His idea was that there should be many Germans, since they were the best kind of people. All these people would need space. Germany would use its strength to take land from the peoples to the east in places like Poland and the USSR. The people living there were inferior to Germans the way bugs are to people, so the best thing to do to the people living there would be to work them to death building a greater German state until they were exterminated. Then there would be plenty of space.
The first step was to militarize. The second was to unify German lands. The Treaty required Germany to avoid having things like air forces, large armies, and really big weapons. The problem was the Treaty was not going to enforce itself. The two countries who were most interested in maintaining Germany in its post-Treaty weakened state were Britain and France and, ultimately, neither of these two countries could make Germany do anything unless they were willing to use force. They were not. Scarred by war and intimidated by a naked, anemic Germany, both countries would spend the last five years before the war broke out scared by their own shadows. First, they looked away when German remilitarized. Great Britain and France acquiesced when Germany reclaimed some of its territory in 1935 (essentially armed with confidence and mean-looking expressions rather than actual weapons, the German soldiers were under instructions to retreat upon ANY sign of resistance. There was no resistance). The unification of Austria and Germany occurred in 1938. Hitler then made a play for Czechoslovakia, a highly industrialized, high-functioning democracy created in the aftermath of World War 1. The Nazis (Hitler's party; found in many countries) said Germans in Czechoslovakia were being mistreated and that the territory where they were being mistreated, the Sudetenland, should be handed over to Germany. Hitler "allowed" Britain and France to attempt to mediate this completely false allegation and pitched many a fist-waving, shirt-rending fit to ensure Britain and France were aware how important this all was to himself, Germany's dignity, and justice. Appalled the way a parent is at a grocery store when the two year old makes an ugly scene demanding candy, they simply wanted Germany to quit making such a big scene. So, while Czechoslovakia waited outside, Britain and France relented and gave Germany its treat—a large part of Czech territory to which Germany had no claim and the lesson that if Germany wants something, Germany can take it and there is no one that will get in the way. This was called the policy of appeasement. It didn't work.
A few months later, Hitler began making the same demands about Poland. On August 14, Germany and the Soviet Union, two countries that REALLY despised each other (think Biggie v. Tupac kind of hate) announced they had signed a non-aggression pact (they hated each other so much they could not even call it a peace treaty). On September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland which lay right in between Germany and the Soviet Union (Three weeks later, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the other side).
The War In Europe
Great Britain and France declare war on September 3, 1939, but it did not matter because the Germans introduced a new twist on warfare called the blitzkrieg. Before, when soldiers met each other on the battlefield, they would shoot at each other because they seemed, well, natural targets for bullets. The Germans decided to put as many soldiers as they could on tanks and trucks and drive past the opposing soldiers and go after the communications and command areas in the rear of the battlefield. That was like cutting a chicken’s head off. The body (soldiers in the field) might still be moving, but there was nothing there to tell it what to do. All the Germans had to do was wait until the body figured it out and then it was dinner time (no picture here, kids; I’ll let your imagination do the work).
This worked so well that the Germans would do it again. In 1940, they took control of Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and France (Hitler would force the French to surrender in the train car where the Germans surrendered in World War 1). In 1941, it was Greece, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union. By the beginning of 1942, it Germany was fully in control of continental Europe. The Germans also attempted to invade Britain, but because of a technological development, radar, Brits were able to focus their meager Royal Air Force to defend the island. Hitler decided to bomb the daylights out of Britain and consolidate control in the areas they occupied.
In the areas under their control, they unleashed a nightmare that one thought only possible in works of horror. They used slaves culled from the populations under their control for labor, brutally slaughtered whole villages to the east, and introduced the Holocaust, or the attempted genocide of the European Jews. In many places, Germans soldiers had been greeted as liberators from the oppressive Soviet Union, complete with young women throwing flowers at the troops. The Germans responded to this by gathering those they could capture into the village churches and setting it on fire. Over six million Jews and many other undesirables (Homosexuals, gypsies, the disabled) would be coldly, methodically murdered away from any battlefield.
The War in the Pacific
The key to the war in the Pacific lie with the unique position of Japan. An island nation, they had industrialized and modernized in the late 1800s while watching European countries take control of the rest of Asia. An industrial nation requires certain resources such as oil and steel, which Japan lacked in significant amounts. Concluding that buying these resources was for chumps, they set out to establish a regional empire that would ensure the continuous replenishment of these resources. They began by invading northern China in the late 1930s. As the war progressed, they came into conflict with the other regional power in the area and a major petroleum supplier, the United States. The United States held a colony, the Philippines, and stationed their massive Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The United States had promised Japan that if they continued their expansionist course, the United States would cut off their petroleum supplies. Japan, viewing war as inevitable, decided that they should strike the first blow. Japan’s war plan called for simultaneous attacks throughout the Pacific, grabbing as much territory as possible while attempting to destroy the only entity capable of stopping them, the US Pacific Fleet. They would then, they strategized, fight holding actions and wait for the fat, lazy Americans to tire of war and call for some sort of negotiated peace in which Japan might not get everything they wanted, but some. The Americans were, after all, reasonable people, right?
The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor occurred in the hangover-saturated atmosphere of a naval base on a Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. Concerned about sabotage from the island’s many residents of Japanese descent, the planes were lined up for easy monitoring. This also meant easy pickings for Japanese pilots, who also sunk most of the battleships stationed in the harbor. The destruction also created over 5000 American deaths and awakened a groggy but powerful giant, the United States. President Franklin Roosevelt announced that the day would live infamy and asked Congress for a declaration of war, which came. On the other side of the world, the British, alone in their battle against an unstoppable German force, breathed a thankful sigh, knowing they were no longer so alone.
The Homefront
Soldiers, sailors, and marines of the United States military would serve their country in a wide variety of environments—the parched deserts of North Africa, the tropical swamps of Pacific islands, the rocky mountains of Italy, the manicured hedgerows of France, the waters of the world’s oceans. Over 16 million would serve and over 400,000 would make the ultimate sacrifice. However, when looking at the scale of human sacrifice of World War 2, the Soviet Union would lose over 30 million of its citizens, China, 10 million, the United States’ contribution was not in blood. The United States contributed the trinkets of war for its Allies’ militaries through a program called Lend-Lease which allowed the president to supply any military effort he thought necessary for the defense of the nation. As a result, the United States quickly turned into a massive, protected nation of factories building the things that those countries in midst of the chaos and upheaval of survival could not build for themselves. In addition, the United States, with its penchant for mechanical tinkering, devised innumerable technological solutions to the challenges of this war, although its final contribution was so dramatically game changing that the world continues to deal with the aftermath.
Factories stayed open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Industrial plants built with consumer comforts in mind, reequipped to make weapons of war. The nation rationed its intake of the materials for war, including rubber, nylon (ladies would draw a line down their legs to make it look like they were wearing hose), gasoline, and even food (margarine was introduced as a completely unacceptable substitute for butter, much to the lasting chagrin of the Greatest Generation). Women were coaxed into leaving their homes and contributing to the war effort through factory work, fat paychecks, and a freedom that was difficult to leave behind once the war was over. This industrial effort in a resource rich nation produced an economy that never fully converted to a war-time economy. The United States found a way to build the weapons of war for its massive military, the militaries of its Allies, and still had room to make a few consumer goods along the way which meant that the United States had discovered the key to having both guns and butter (well, not butter exactly) for first time since the introduction of total war.
Fortunately for the United States, and her allies, Hitler had persecuted virtually the entire European scientific community. These scientists found refuge, collaborators, and funding for their revenge. The most famous example of technological innovation during World War 2, was the Manhattan Project, which began as a letter of warning to Franklin Roosevelt about German efforts to unlock the power of the atom for war from none other than Albert Einstein himself. The American government funneled incredible resources into the development of an atomic weapon for itself. The first weapon (of three built) was exploded in the deserts of New Mexico in the summer of 1945; scientists who bet New Mexico would be incinerated lost but the weapon was powerful enough that people saw the flash of the bomb 150 miles away. The President, Harry Truman (FDR had died in April), was unaware of the project but delighted at its outcome when informed.
The Tide Turns
Fighting in the Pacific challenged the physical, mental, and emotional resources of all involved. In order to secure territory, American soldiers and marines had to repeatedly attempt amphibious landings on the beaches of the islands in the Pacific, while the fleet of American aircraft carriers provided protection and cleared the shipping lanes. Once the men landed, they faced clearing the heavily fortified island of the enemy which believed an honorable death preferable to a dishonorable capture. During the Battle of Peleliu, 10,000 Japanese soldiers died while only 202 were captured. During the Aleutian campaign, over 4000 Japanese died, while none were taken prisoner. This, like the notion the Japanese had that the United States might submit to a negotiated peace, was one of the more tragic misunderstandings in the war. Soldiers from the Pacific conflict would occasionally reflect on the fact that the enemy refused to give up, even once the cause was clearly lost, displaying anger at having to fight people who demanded that the end always resulted in more death.
The Americans devised a strategy called island-hopping. The idea was to bypass heavily fortified islands, choosing instead more lightly defended islands and building airstrips from which to slowly make their way toward the home islands. This, along with concurrent campaigns in the Philippines, Indochina, and China, slowly wore the Japanese down and, predictably, drained their resources. American strategists began contemplating an invasion of the home islands in order to force an unconditional surrender. Their casualty estimates for both friend and foe were beyond anything the United States had ever experienced in warfare: over two million Allied casualties during the battle was a common estimate (remember the US lost 400,000 during the entire war).
The battle in Europe turned in 1943 with the end of the Battle of Stalingrad in the Soviet Union. The Germans had become unraveled in the vast, freezing expanse of the Russian steppes, trying to follow the increasingly maniacal rantings of Der Furhrer that substituted for solid military strategy and planning while fighting an enemy that understood the fundamental reality of the war—extermination. German retreat began and the myriad ethnicities targeted for destruction in order to create living space for a superior race united with the Russian soldiers to make sure the retreating armies were made to suffer.
The United States and Great Britain made attempts to assist their Russian ally in 1942 and 1943 by opening campaigns at the Italians and Germans in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. While effective at seasoning overenthusiastic, naïve soldiers, these campaigns were strategic afterthoughts and the Russian ally knew it and pressured the US and Great Britain to relieve the stress on the Soviet Union and open another front on the continent. A large moving city of ships, men, and guns crept as quietly as a moving city could and landed on four beaches in France in June 1944. The Germans fought back fiercely, but the Allies managed to maintain a hold on the continent. With that, and the ability of the Allies to bring war to the continent, meant the end for Germany. It would take a year for the Americans, British, and other soldiers to meet the Russians in Berlin but it did happen. The Germans, after Hitler and his inner circle committed suicide, surrendered on May 8, 1945.
In the Pacific, the war continued. The US military continued planning for its invasion of the Japanese home islands, moving the last chess piece into place by invading nearby Okinawa in April 1945. News from the Trinity testing site in New Mexico presented the President with an option for avoiding the invasion. No one fully understood what this new atomic weapon meant, but they still had two and it seemed like they should try that before throwing a bunch of Americans into a meat grinder. So, on August 6, 1945, after an opaque warning to the Japanese that the Americans had a new weapon of unimaginable destruction, the United States Air Force quietly flow over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. In one second, 80,000 people were dead. Others, suffering from a mysterious illness and dealing with the chaos of living in a place that was destroyed in an instant, would die later. The Japanese, still proud, still wanting their sole condition of surrender--protection of the Emperor—to be met, were attempting to surrender, largely by hoping the Soviet Union would deliver their messages to the Americans. Two days later, keeping a commitment made to the US and eyeing territory and power in Asia, the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan. The next day, a little amazed that Japan still had not surrendered, the United States dropped their last atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki. This time, because of the geography of the town, only 40,000 casualties were reported. The Japanese, devastated and destroyed, officially surrendered a week later.
World War 2 ended September 2, 1945. Ask any American alive in the middle of 1942 if what they thought the outcome of the war would be, they most certainly would not have imagined what did happen. The war generated more problems than it resolved. Great Britain and France would lose their colonial empires and the attendant power and esteem that goes along with being a successful imperialist. The emergence of the United States’ atomic bomb and the sacrifice of the Soviet Union combined to set the countries at each other’s throats in an incredibly risky chase for security from the other. The United States, looking for allies in their conflict with the USSR, decided to rebuild both Japan and Germany (well, part of it) into modern, democratic states that became stabilizers in their respective regions and American allies.