{"id":679,"date":"2015-10-04T20:55:35","date_gmt":"2015-10-04T20:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/?p=679"},"modified":"2015-10-04T20:55:35","modified_gmt":"2015-10-04T20:55:35","slug":"1940s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/1940s\/","title":{"rendered":"1940s"},"content":{"rendered":"

Overview<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 1940s witnessed the worst military conflict in world history. \u00a0Out of more than 70 million combatants from 70 different countries, the editors at Digital History estimate about 17 million dead, including about 400,000 American military personnel out of more than\u00a015 million in uniform. \u00a0All of those figures exclude other types of casualties (such as wounded) and also civilian deaths, which vary widely by source, but which probably exceeded 50 million overall, included nearly 6 million European Jews in Nazi death\u00a0camps<\/a>. There had been plenty of warnings of impending conflict, but nothing that could have anticipated this type of carnage. \u00a0Americans seemed especially determined to learn\u00a0lessons from this immense bloodletting. The United States was not really isolationist<\/a> in the years between 1919 and 1941, but there had been a palpable sense of disconnection with the rising tide of problems in Europe and Asia. \u00a0As Russell Baker put it in his memoir, Growing Up<\/em>, “worlds were burning, but they seemed far away.” \u00a0Baker remembers\u00a0his family mocking the \"Bund\"<\/a>“sausage-stuffers” of the German American Bund (pictured to the right, marching in New York in 1939). \u00a0 His mother memorably claimed in 1939, while they lived in Baltimore, that\u00a0“This is England’s war. \u00a0Let England fight it.” \u00a0Yet once the Japanese launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor<\/a> on December 7, 1941, such cautious sentiment shifted dramatically. \u00a0Under the leadership of Franklin Roosevelt, the United States quickly moved to engage in the global conflict\u00a0on multiple fronts, not only in the Pacific against Imperial Japan, but also in support of the Allied powers in the European fight against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. \u00a0The war turned much of the politics of the previous generation upside down. \u00a0The US was now allied with the Soviet Union. \u00a0American men and materials were being rushed overseas. \u00a0Women were working and contributing mightily to the war effort on what was called the “homefront.”<\/a> \u00a0There were also periods of terrible panic, such as the decision to relocate Japanese and Japanese-Americans on the West Coast to internment camps<\/a>. Throughout this turbulent period, however,\u00a0the United States continued to lead\u00a0what many were already calling the\u00a0“united nations” against a range of totalitarian threats. \u00a0There was still some signs of economic, social and racial troubles\u00a0at home, but the national focus had generally moved away from the kind of domestic concerns that had dominated during the\u00a0Great Depression. \u00a0Military victory came in the summer of 1945, but not before a new U.S. president, Harry Truman, felt compelled to authorize the dropping of two atomic bombs<\/a> on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. \u00a0The world’s most destructive\u00a0war had finally produced the world’s most destructive\u00a0weapon. \u00a0The atomic age proved difficult for policymakers in the Cold War era to handle –though somehow, they did. As it began, however,\u00a0Russell Baker reported that he and his family were utterly unaware that “anything very extraordinary had happened.” \u00a0Instead, the young naval aviator-in-training went home, a veteran but not a combat hero,\u00a0and returned to\u00a0a new life, like millions of other Americans in the 1940s, in the shadow of terrible war, but still proud of the nation’s sacrifices for global freedom and full of hope for a better future.<\/p>\n

Online Textbook Resources<\/strong><\/p>\n

World War II from Digital History<\/a> (Mintz and McNeil)<\/p>\n

Early Cold War from Digital History<\/a> (Mintz and McNeil)<\/p>\n

Selected Timelines<\/strong><\/p>\n

World War II<\/a>\u00a0(National Geographic)<\/p>\n

Featured Videos<\/strong><\/p>\n