Traditions and Encounters, AP Edition (Bentley), 5th Edition

Chapter 36: New Conflagrations: World War II and the Cold War

Chapter Outline

1. Origins of World War II
1. Japan's war in China
1. Global conflict began with Japanese invasion of Manchuria, 1931
1. League of Nations condemned action; Japan simply withdrew from league
2. 1937, Japan launched full-scale invasion of China
2. The Rape of Nanjing characterized war waged against civilians
1. Aerial bombing of Shanghai
2. In Nanjing, widespread rape and slaughter
3. Chinese resistance movement
1. Nationalists and communists formed "united front" against Japanese
2. Unable to effectively work together, they conducted guerilla attacks
3. Communists gained popular support throughout war
4. Japan's Triple Pact with Germany and Italy, 1940; neutrality pact with Soviet Union, 1941
2. Italian and German aggression
1. Italy after the Great War
1. Italians felt slighted at the Paris Peace Conference
2. Italian losses high in World War I; economy never recovered
3. Mussolini promised national glory, empire
4. Annexed Libya; invaded Ethiopia (1935-1936), killed 250,000 Ethiopians
2. Germany: deep resentment at Treaty of Versailles
1. Harsh terms: reparations, economic restrictions
2. Former Allies inclined not to object when Hitler violated terms of the treaty
3. Hitler blamed Jews, communists, liberals for losing the war and accepting the treaty
3. After 1933, Hitler moved to ignore terms of peace settlement
1. Withdrew from League of Nations, 1933
2. Rebuilt military, air force; reinstated draft
3. Took back the Rhineland, 1936, then annexed Austria, 1938
4. Reclaimed Sudetenland from western Czechoslovakia, 1938
5. At each step, France and Britain did nothing to stop him
4. The Munich Conference: Peace for our time?
1. In 1938, Germany "appeased" by taking Sudetenland, promised to stop there
2. Britain and France desperate to avoid war
3. 1939, violating Munich agreement, Hitler seized most of Czechoslovakia
5. Russian-German Treaty of Non-Aggression, 1939, shocked the world


2. Total war: the world under fire
1. Blitzkreig: Germany conquers Europe
1. Strategy of a "lightening war": unannounced, surprise attacks
2. September 1939, Nazi invasion of Poland
1. Poland defeated in one month
2. Divided between Germany and Soviet Union
3. Battle of the Atlantic: German U-boats (submarines) against British ship convoys
4. Spring 1940, the fall of France
1. Nazis swiftly conquered Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands
2. French signed an armistice in June 1940
3. Italy entered the war on Nazis' side
5. The battle of Britain
1. Germans' strategy to defeat Britain solely through air attacks
2. Aerial bombing killed forty thousand British civilians; Royal Air Force prevented defeat
3. Summer 1941, Germany also controlled Balkans and North Africa
2. The German invasion of the Soviet Union
1. Operation Barbarossa: German surprise invasion of Soviet Union, June 1941
1. Wanted eastern land on which to resettle Germans
2. Captured Russian heartland; Leningrad under siege; troops outside Moscow
2. Blitzkrieg strategies less effective in Russia
1. Soviets drew on tremendous reserves: 360 Soviet divisions against 150 German
2. Hitler underestimated Soviet industrial capacity
3. Stalin quickly moved Soviet industry east to the Ural Mountains
3. Russian winter caught German troops ill-prepared
3. Battles in Asia and the Pacific
1. U.S. support of the Allies before Pearl Harbor
1. Roosevelt sold and then "loaned" arms and war material to the British
2. Later supplied the Soviets and the Chinese
2. Japanese expansion continued into southeast Asia: Indochina, 1940-1941
1. United States responded by freezing Japanese assets, implementing oil embargo
2. Demanded withdrawal from China and southeast Asia
3. Prime minister Tojo Hikedi developed plan of attack
3. 7 December 1941: U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor attacked by Japanese pilots
1. U.S. naval power in Pacific devastated
2. United States declared war on Japan; Germany and Italy declared war on United States
4. Japanese victories after Pearl Harbor
1. Japan advanced swiftly in the Pacific and southeast Asia
2. Conquered Philippines, Dutch East Indies, Indochina, Burma, Singapore
3. Slogan "Asia for Asia" masked Japanese imperialism against fellow Asians
4. Defeat of the Axis Powers
1. Impact of Soviet Union and U.S. entry in 1941
1. Brought vital personnel and industry to Allies
2. German subs sank 2,452 merchants ships, but U.S. shipyards built more
2. Allied victories came after 1943
1. Russians defeated the Germans at Stalingrad, pushed them back
2. 1944, British-U.S. troops invaded North Africa and then Italy
3. June 1944, British-U.S. forces invaded northern France at Normandy
4. Overwhelmed Germans on coast of Normandy, 6 June 1944
5. Round-the-clock strategic bombing by United States and Britain leveled German cities
6. Germans surrendered unconditionally 8 May 1945; Hitler committed suicide
3. Turning the tide in the Pacific
1. Turning point: the Battle of Midway, June 1942; United States broke Japanese code
2. Island-hopping strategy: moving to islands close to Japan for air attacks
4. Savage fighting on islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa
1. Japanese used suicide kamikaze pilots
2. Okinawan civilians refused to surrender
3. U.S. military was convinced that Japan would not surrender
5. Japanese surrender after devastating assault
1. U.S. firebombing raids devastated Japanese cities: in Tokyo, one hundred thousand killed
2. August 1945: atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed two hundred thousand
3. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan, 8 August
4. Japanese emperor surrendered unconditionally 15 August, ending WWII


3. Life during wartime
1. Occupation, collaboration, and resistance
1. Patterns of occupation varied
1. Japanese conquests: puppet governments, independent allies, or military control
2. German conquests: racially "superior" people given greater autonomy
   (a) In northern Europe, civilian governments under German supervision
   (b) In eastern Europe, conquered territories taken over by military
2. Both Japan and Germany exploited conquered states, resources, and peoples
1. Slave labor conscripted from conquered populations to work in factories
2. Labor conscripted from Poles, Soviets, Balkans, also Chinese and Koreans
3. Many local people accepted, even collaborated with occupying forces
1. In Asia, Japanese domination not much different from European domination
2. Others aided conquerors to gain power in new administration
3. Anticommunism led some in western Europe to join the Nazi SS troops
4. Resistance to occupation took many forms
1. Active resistance: sabotage, assaults, assassination
2. Passive resistance as well: intelligence gathering, refusing to submit
3. Resistance in Japan and Germany was dangerous and rare
5. Occupation forces responded to resistance with atrocities
1. Brutal reprisals to acts of resistance by both Germans and Japanese
2. Despite retaliation, resistance movements grew throughout the war
2. The Holocaust
1. Long history of anti-Semitism created tolerance of Nazi's anti-Jewish measures
1. At first Nazis encouraged Jewish emigration
2. Many Jews were unable to leave after Nazis took their wealth
3. Nazi conquest of Europe brought more Jews under their control
2. The "final solution"
1. Began with slaughter of Jews, Roma, and other undesirables in Soviet Union
2. By end of 1941, German special killing units had killed 1.4 million Jews
3. By 1942 Nazis decided to evacuate all European Jews to camps in east Poland
4. In Auschwitz alone at least one million Jews perished
3. Jewish resistance
1. Will to resist sapped by prolonged starvation, disease
2. Uprising of Warsaw ghetto, 1943: sixty thousand Jews rose up against Germans
4. Altogether, about 5.7 million Jews perished in the Holocaust
3. Women and the war
1. "It's a Woman's War, Too!"
1. Over half a million British, 350,000 American women joined auxiliary services
2. Soviet and Chinese women took up arms and joined resistance groups
3. Jewish women and girls suffered as much as men and boys
2. Women's social roles changed dramatically
1. By taking jobs or heading families, women gained independence and confidence
2. Changes expected to be temporary, would return to traditional role after war
3. "Comfort women"
1. Japanese armies forcibly recruited three hundred thousand women to serve in military brothels
2. 80 percent of comfort women came from Korea
3. A comfort woman had to service between twenty and thirty men each day
4. Many were massacred by Japanese soldiers; survivors experienced deep shame


4. The Cold War
1. Origins of the Cold War
1. The United Nations
2. Truman doctrine, 1947: United States would support "free peoples resisting subjugation"
1. Perception of world divided between so-called free and enslaved peoples
2. Interventionist policy, dedicated to "containment" of communism
3. The Marshall Plan, 1948: U.S. aid for the recovery of Europe
1. Idea to rebuild European economies and strengthen capitalism
2. Soviet response: Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) for its satellite nations
4. Military Alliances
1. Unlikely alliance between Britain, Soviet Union, and United States held up for duration of war
2. Not without tensions: Soviet resented U.S.-British delays in European invasion
5. A divided Germany
1. Soviets took east Germany, while United States, Britain, and France took west Germany
2. Berlin also divided four ways; by 1950 division seemed permanent
6. Berlin blockade and airlift, 1948-1949
1. Soviet closed roads, trains, tried to strangle West Berlin into submission
2. Britain and United States kept city supplied with round-the-clock airlift
3. After embargo against Soviet satellites, Soviets backed down and ended blockade
7. The Berlin Wall, 1961
1. 1949-1961, flood of refugees from East to West Germany, East to West Berlin
2. Soviet solution: a wall of barbed wire through the city fortified the border
3. Former Allied nations objected but did not risk a full conflict over the wall
2. The globalization of the Cold War
1. The People's Republic of China
1. Civil war between nationalists and communists resumed, 1945
2. Outmaneuvered, the nationalists under Jiang Jieshi fled to Taiwan in 1948
3. Mao Zedong proclaimed People's Republic of China, 1949
2. Fraternal Cooperation
1. Both communist; shared common enemy, the United States
2. Alarmed by U.S. support of Japan, south Korea, and Taiwan
3. Beijing accepted direction from Moscow in early 1950s
3. Confrontations in Korea
1. Korea divided at 38th parallel in 1948; U.S. ally in south, Soviet ally in north
2. North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel and captured Seoul, June 1950
3. U.S. and UN troops pushed back North Korean troops to Chinese border
4. Chinese troops came in, pushed U.S. forces and their allies back in the south
5. Both sides agreed to a cease-fire in July 1953, again at 38th parallel
4. Cracks in the Soviet-Chinese alliance
1. USSR gave more economic support to noncommunist countries
2. Both nations openly competed for influence in Africa and Asia
3. Rift between the two nations was public by the end, 1964
5. Nuclear arms race: terrifying proliferation of nuclear weapons by both sides
1. NATO and Warsaw Treaty Organization amassed huge weapons stockpiles
2. By 1960s USSR reached military parity with United States
3. By 1970 both superpowers acquired MAD, "mutually assured destruction"
6. Cuba: nuclear flashpoint
1. Castro's revolutionary force overthrew dictator Batista in 1959
2. Castro seized U.S. properties, killed or exiled thousands of political opponents
3. United States cut off Cuban sugar imports, imposed export embargo
4. Castro accepted Soviet massive economic aid and arms shipments
7. Bay of Pigs fiasco, April 1961
1. CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba failed
2. Diminished U.S. prestige in Latin America
3. Dissent Intervention, and Rapprochement
1. De-Stalinization
1. 1956, Khrushchev denounced Stalin's rule of terror
2. Millions of political prisoners released from work camps
3. Brief "thaw" in soviet culture from 1956 to 1964, easing censorship
2. Soviet Intervention
3. Détente
1. Leaders of both superpowers agreed on policy of détente, late 1960s
2. Exchanged visits and signed agreements calling for cooperation, 1972, 1974