Readings: Boyer, Paul S. et al. The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People

Chapter 25: Americans and a World in Crisis, 1933–1945

Discussion Questions:

  1. What was the strength of isolationist sentiment in the United States in from 1939 until December of 1941?  Did President Roosevelt lead the American people or follow them?  Could he have done more to help the allies before the attack on Pearl Harbor?

  2. Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor?  What did they hope to accomplish?

  3. How well did the American military forces perform during the early years of the war? What were the reasons for these successes or failures? How did the events overseas affect public opinion about the war at home?

  4. How did World War II change American business, labor and government.

  5. What were the effects of World War II on Mexican-Americans, African-Americans and Japanese- Americans.  Why were these effects different?

  6. Discuss the effects of World War on women, marriage and the family.

  7. Why did the United States drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?  What explanations have been offered?  Do you feel the United States actions were justified?

 

Identifications:

Good Neighbor Policy

Nye Committee Hearings

voyage of the St. Louis

fascism and Nazism

Francisco Franco, Spanish Loyalists, and the Spanish Civil War

Nazi-Soviet Pact, 1939

Benny Goodman, Count Basie, and Glenn Miller

William Faulkner

Good Neighbor policy

Benito Mussolini

Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

Munich Conference, 1938

Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936, 1937

Nuremberg Laws, Kristallnacht, and the “final solution”

Battle of Britain

Henry L. Stimson

Henry Wallace

Wendell Wilkie

isolationists and the America First Committee versus the interventionists

lend-lease

Atlantic Charter

Office of Price Administration (OPA)

James F. Byrnes and the Office of War Mobilization

Smith-Connally War Labor Disputes Act

Manhattan Project and J. Robert Oppenheimer

GI Bill of Rights

Operation Torch and Operation Overlord

Battle of the Bulge

Battles of Coral Sea and Midway

“Rosie the Riveter”

Executive Order 8802 and the Fair Employment Practices Commission

Korematsu case (1944)

the Declaration of the United Nations

the Second Front

Dwight D. Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur

Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) versus Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung)

Tehran Conference

Potsdam Conference

Yalta Conference