The
Great Shift in Power: World War II to the U.S. at the “summit of the world”[1]
This chronology has footnotes so you can
get details that you want about specific events:
1939 to
1945 FDR to Truman - notice the grey items indicating a test area.
Notice these major changes over time in
the chronology:
1.
Backgrounds to
Pearl Harbor – isolationism and ways around it
· 1939 Russia and Germany, non-aggression pack
· 1940 National Research Committee (and the Einstein
connection—alerting FDR to the Nazi’s nuclear plans)
· 1940 Battle of Britain
· 1940 Japan goes into formerly French IndoChina
· America First Committee – Charles Lindbergh, actions
that reduce his reputation
· FDR:
o
1940 - Destroyers
for Bases Agreement
o
1941 – Lend-Lease
· Rationing starts (Why? – To preserve materials for the
war and the sacrifice not be just by the middle class and the poor.)
2.
War production –
changes to groups – Scarcity and “Great Arsenal of Democracy” and the shift to
potential prosperity
· Women –Rosie the Riveter (6M)
· Tuskegee Airman/segregated units (Earlier, 1941
Threatened black march on Washington)
3.
War, POWs, and
slave labor – Japanese in and out of the US
· 1941 Japan takes multiple Pacific areas, including
Philippines (later Bataan Death March and slave labor)
· 1941, December 7th Pearl Harbor
· Exec. Order 9066 (relocation of the Japanese from the
west coast)
· 1942 North Africa
· 1943 Russia stops Germany at Stalingrad
· 1943 Guadalcanal (after “leapfrog”)
· 1943 Italy
4.
Normandy through
partition
· 1944, June D.D. Eisenhower, Allies –and years more
fighting in Europe and Pacific – Concentration camps found
· 1945, April UN Charter – FDR dead/HS Truman
· 1945, June Partition of Berlin and Germany
· 1945 Nuremberg trials agreed to
· 1945, Hiroshima, atomic bomb (Aug. 6)
Nagasaki (Aug. 9)—and we no longer need Russian troops
5.
In the midst of
war, a look to solve a problem of the past and to a better future – G.I. Bill
· Unemployment for 1 year
· Loans for home/start business
· Hospitals
· Education
6.
Remaining war
issues
- Europe – Holocaust and the slow shift from racism
and the beginning of the Cold War
- Pacific – Japan and Douglas MacArthur
7.
Shift to American
supremacy and the shift from
isolationism