March 21-23: World War II

Read for March 21

 

Questions for reading:  Be able to list the 3 most significant developments that you think came as a result of World War II. Do you think freedom was narrowed or limited during the War? Why or why not? Can you connect the four freedoms and the economic bill of rights to the connections for the 1930s. If you were to continue one of your characters chosen for the first paper, what might have happened to them during the war? What would their perspectives on what happened have been, do you think?

 

Read for March 23

·         Give Me Liberty, 874-890

·         Voices of Freedom 158-170

Questions for reading: What were the major intellectual debates about how freedom might be defined in the postwar world? Be able to distinguish between the views not only from the textbook reading but from the readings in Voices of Freedom, isolating quotations that you think distinguishes the views. How did the war affect the freedoms and liberties of blacks, Indians, Japanese-Americans and Mexican-Americans?  Why does Robert Jackson dissent in the (p. 879 Give Me Liberty) from the Supreme Court Ruling that upheld the internment policy that the U.S. imposed? What does Foner argue about the internment policy?  

 

 

 

 

 

Recommended:

Stories that suggest major American Industrialists Had Ties to and profited from Nazis/Fascist enemies During the War (Ford, GM, GE, IBM, Standard Oil, Kodak)

·         Trading with the Enemy’

·         Ford and the Fuhrer New Documents Reveal the Close Ties Between Dearborn and the Nazi

·         GE’s ties

·         Washington Post Story of GM and Ford Nazi Ties

“GM was an integral part of the German war effort. The Nazis could have invaded Poland and Russia without  Switzerland. They could not have done so without GM.”

·         IBM: and that’s how the trains ran on time

·         Another story on IBM

·         Kodak’s Nazi ties

 

 

Mobilizing for War, war experiences

·         Orville Quick Remembers Pearl Harbor

·         Perspectives on War and ConsumerismWhat is the author arguing about the difference between previous wars and 9/11?

·         A Day that Will Live in Infamy-FDR’s declaration of War

·         Homefront Advertising—selling life after the war

·         Read an Issue of Yank—army weekly paper for the troops

·         Marine Describes the Battle of Guam

·         "Hello, You Fighting Orphans": "Tokyo Rose" Woos U.S. Sailors and Marines

·         A Japanese Soldier Describes the Horrors of Guadalcanal

·         "How to tell a Chinese from a 'Jap.'" (photo/explanation)

·         Depicting the enemy. (photo)

·         To buy is patriotic (photo)

·         "True towel tales . . . as told to us by a soldier."   (ad

 

 

Culture/photos/advertising

·         True towel tales . . . as told to us by a soldier.”

·        "An American soldier of the Antitank Co., 34th Regiment who was killed by mortar fire."

·         After work.

·         Welcome back.

·         "[T]ests have shown . . . that our three average men are equal."
"Identify them by their garb."
Believe it or not

·         Powers of Persuasion: Poster Art from World War II
National Archives and Records Administration.\

·         World War II Propaganda, Cartoons, Film, Music, & Art

·         Pictures of African Americans During World War II

·         A People at War [World War II]

 

Women/Labor/African-Americans/Latinos

·         A World War II Navy Nurse Fights Sexism in the Military

·         War Labor Board on Equal Pay for Equal Work for women

·         After work. (ship yards photo)

·         “Continued Employment after the War?”: The Women’s Bureau Studies Postwar Plans of Women Workers

·         Ruth Young Jandreau’s memories of the United Electrical Workers union and women during War and post-war era

·         What Did You Do In The War Grandma? An Oral History of Rhode Island Women During World War II

·         “Belles of the Ball Game”: Women’s Professional Baseball League Thrives in the 1940s

·         The Michigan CIO debates the No-Strike Pledge

·         Roll Hitler Out and Roll the Union In: The No-Strike Pledge

·         Women and War: An Exhibit of Photographs from the Schlesinger Library

·         War Labor Board on Equal Pay for Black Workers

·         Mexican youth and the context of the Zoot Suit riots

·         “We’re looking for suits to burn”-Zoot Suit account

·         Gis fight poll tax for Mexican-Americans in Texas

·         U.S. Latinos and Latinas in WWII America Oral History project –follow links to one or two stories

·         Fighters on the FarmFront: Oregon’s Emergency Farm Labor Service, 1943-1947; Farm laborers included urban youth and women, soldiers, white collar professionals, displaced Japanese- Americans, returning war veterans, workers from other states, migrant workers from Mexico and Jamaica, and even German prisoners-of-war.

·         Student Voices from World War II and the McCarthy Era –oral histories of a farm labor project are the main material from WWII   ---(not to be used for extra reading)

·         Gonna Miss President Roosevelt – Blues song lamenting FDR’s death

·         Labor and the Holocaust: The Jewish Labor Committee and the Anti-Nazi Struggle

·         Oakland General Strike of 1946 Exhibit

·         GM Rejects Reuther’s Call to “Open the Books”: The Post-WWII Strike Wave

·         Westinghouse 1946 strike

·         Truman Speaks on the 1946 Railroad Strike—using Government power to Tame Labor

 

Japanese Internment:

 

The Decision to Drop the Bomb:

·         “Why We had to Drop the Atomic Bomb” ==standard explanation for dropping the bomb, but I would argue that this is deeply flawed argument given evidence in document following

·         Hiroshima: Historians Reassess – most historians question the standard explanation, because of the evidence that has come forward to challenge that standard interpretation. This article reassesses: The key challenge is to see that the Japanese were ready to surrender, and that the bomb was intended as a message to the Soviet Union. This article presents some of the key evidence for that

·         My outline of atomic diplomacy as a reason U.S. dropped the bomb – one page

·         Ugly History Hides in Plain site

·         Bomb As a Technology of Death this takes some time to get through, so prepare to make an intense reading. I expect you to make a serious effort to understand the argument, though it WILL take time and an effort on your part. If we have a reading response, I will require everyone to mention a key argument and point of evidence from this reading. For more on the bomb, see list of readings at bottom of page

·         One other document from the list below, one relevant to your paper or interest – exclude photos please

·          

 

Highly useful for background, clarification: some of these links are not working.

·         Who’s Who and What’d they do? -  a list and more background on the figures mentioned in the articles

·         Chronology of Decision to Use Bomb –very detailed

·         Critical Review of Gar Alperowitz’s book (just read that part of the review, you can skip the rest)

·         1995 Article in Houston Chronicle (pro-bomb)

·         Silencing History: Censoring The Exhibit on the Enola Gay

·         Hiroshima: Was it necessary? By Doug Long—esp. good on the issue of Hirohito and unconditional surrender

·         Did the Bomb Prolong the War?

·         Forgetting the Bomb; The Assault on History by Historian Martin Sherwin—on suppression of information after the war

·         International Law - Bombing of Civilians - At the beginning of World War II, the bombing of civilians was regarded as a barbaric act. As the war continued, however, all sides abandoned previous restraints. But international law has always distinguished between civilians and combatants. Legal context to the decision, from a variety of international treaties and the 1996 World Court opinion.

·         Hiroshima:  who disagreed with the atomic bombing? Including Dwight D. Eisenhower, Albert Einstein, etc (some of these people were censored in the bomb exhibit at NASA)

·         Documents on the use of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

·         Documents relevant to the dropping of the Atomic Bomb—100s of documents, many of them those that the historians you’ve read relied on for interpretation

·         Hiroshima Archive –see link for “Hiroshima Directory” at the opening page for more; photos, memories, documents, extensive

·         Remembering Nagasaki

·         Excerpt from Hiroshima’s shadow (about the active attempt to censor discussion about the bomb)

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·         Documents from the Truman Library

·         Hiroshima Archives from Japan

·         Universal Declaration of Human Rights  -- remarkable agreement that sought to make human rights to font of post-war society, still the working document of the U.N.

·         20 mishaps that might have sparked a nuclear war

·         Scientists who were involved in the nuclear control movement

·         Why Did we have to Win it Twice? – a nuclear physicist remembers

·         The A-Bomb Won’t Do What You think  -- disputing the notion that the bomb won the war

·         I’m Not Afraid of the A-Bomb  -- government attempts to dispel fears

·         Korea: from Truman to Eisenhower administration, documents, etc

·         Hidden History of the Cuban Missile Crisis