THE ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY

 

In the 1930s every year seemed to bring a new war, or threat of war, somewhere in the world. Leaders like the German dictator Hitler threatened and bullied. Nations built more tanks, warships and military aircraft. President Roosevelt spoke to the American people in 1937 about wars being fought in Spain and China. "Innocent peoples, innocent nations are being cruelly sacrificed to a greed for power and supremacy," he warned. "If these things come to pass [happen] in other parts of the world, let no one imagine that America will escape."

 

But Spain and China seemed far away. Most Americans ignored Roosevelt's warning. They believed that the best thing to do was to let foreigners solve their problems themselves. Isolationists felt this particularly strongly. These were people who believed that Americans should try to cut off, or "isolate," the United States from the problems of the outside world.

 

Isolationist ideas were very strong in Congress during the 1930s. It passed a number of laws called Neutrality Acts. These said that American citizens would not be allowed to sell military equipment, or lend money, to any nations at war. Even non-military supplies such as foodstuffs would be sold to warring countries only if they paid cash for them and collected them in their own ships.

 

Then, in 1939, war broke out in Europe. By the summer of 1940 Hitler's armies had overrun all of western Europe. Only Britain - exhausted and short of weapons - still defied them. With Hitler the master of Europe, and his ally, Japan, becoming ever stronger in Asia, Americans saw at last the dangerous position of the United States, sandwiched between the two.

 

Roosevelt had already persuaded Congress to approve the first peacetime military conscription in American history and to suspend the Neutrality Acts. Now he sent Britain all the military equipment that the United States could spare - rifles, guns, ships. Early in 1941 the British ran out of money. In March Roosevelt persuaded Congress to accept his Lend Lease Plan.

 

Lend Lease gave Roosevelt the right to supply military equipment and other goods to Britain without payment. He could do the same for any country whose defense he considered necessary to the safety of the United States. American guns, food and aircraft crossed the Atlantic Ocean in large quantities. They played a vital part in helping Britain to continue to fight against Hitler. When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, Roosevelt used the Lend Lease scheme to send aid to the Russians, too.

 

Fighting was also taking place in Asia at this time. Japanese forces had invaded Manchuria in 1931 and China in 1937. In July 1941, they also occupied the French colony of Indochina. This alarmed the American government. It saw the growing power of Japan as a threat both to peace in Asia and to American trading interests. Ever since the 1937 attack on China the United States had been reducing its exports to Japan of goods that were useful in war - aircraft and chemicals, for example. Now, in July 1941, it stopped all shipments of oil.

 

Japan faced disaster. It imported 80 percent of its oil from the United States. Without this American oil its industries would be paralyzed. "Japan is like a fish in a pond from which the water is being drained away," a senior naval officer told Emperor Hirohito.

 

In October, General Hideki Tojo became Japan's Prime Minister. Tojo was well known for his belief that a sharp use of force was often the best way to solve disagreements. This had earned him a nickname - the Razor. There was plenty of oil in Southeast Asia. Tojo decided that Japan must seize it - and must make in impossible for the Americans to use their Pacific battle fleet to stop them.

 

On December 7, 1941, Japanese warplanes roared in over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the American navy's main base in the Pacific Ocean. Their bombs and torpedoes sank or badly damaged eight American battleships, blew up hundreds of aircraft and killed over 2,000 men.

 

When the Pearl Harbor attack took place, the United States and Japan were still at peace. The United States declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941. Since Germany was Japan's ally, Hitler then declared war on the United States. The war in Europe and the war in Asia became one war. Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States (the Allies) were the main countries on one side. Germany and Japan (the Axis) were the main countries on the other.

 

The United States government organized the whole American economy towards winning the war. It placed controls on wages and prices, and introduced high income taxes. Gasoline and some foods were rationed. Factories stopped producing consumer goods such as automobiles and washing machines, and started making tanks, bombers and other war supplies. The government also spent a vast amount - two thousand million dollars - on a top-secret research scheme. The scheme was code-named the Manhattan Project. By 1945 scientists working on the scheme had produced and tested the world's first atomic bomb.

 

Allied war planners agreed to concentrate on defeating Germany first. In 1942 the Soviet Union was under heavy attack by the Germans. To help the Russians, American generals recommended an early invasion of German-occupied France. But Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, persuaded Roosevelt to attack the Germans first in the Mediterranean region. Combined American and British forced landed in North Africa in November 1942, and joined other British forces already fighting there. Together, the Allied armies defeated the German general Rommel's Afrika Korps. In 1943 they invaded Sicily and the mainland of Italy. After months of bitter fighting, on June 4, 1944, they freed Rome from German control.

 

Two days later, on June 6, Allied troops invaded Normandy in German-occupied France. Their Supreme Commander was the American general Eisenhower. The invasion was code-named Operation Overlord. The day it took place was referred to as D-Day - D for Deliverance. From early in the morning of D-Day hundreds of Allied landing craft emptied their loads of men and weapons on to the flat Normandy beaches. German soldiers fought hard to push the invaders into the sea. But they failed. By the end of July Allied soldiers were racing across France. Paris was liberated on August 24 and by September Allied forces had crossed Germany's western border.

 

But the Germans were not yet beaten. In December 1944, they launched a last fierce attack in the Ardennes region of Belgium. They punched back the Allied front line in a bulge many miles deep. This gave the battle its name - the Battle of the Bulge. It was a month before the Allies could organize a counterattack and drive back the Germans.

 

The Battle of the Bulge proved to be the last German offensive of the Second World War. On April 25, 1945, British and American soldiers met advancing Soviet troops on the banks of the River Elbe in the middle of Germany. On April 30 Hitler shot himself. German soldiers everywhere laid down their weapons and on May 5, 1945, Germany surrendered.

 

In the Pacific Japanese armed forces won some striking early victories. In only a few months they overran Southeast Asia and the islands of the western Pacific. By the summer of 1942 they had conquered over 1.5 million square miles of land, rich in raw materials and inhabited by more than 100 million people. The conquered lands included the Philippines, where thousands of American troops were trapped and forced to surrender.

 

Japan's first setback came in May 1942. In the Battle of the Coral Sea, aircraft from American carriers drove back a big Japanese invasion fleet that was threatening Australia. In June the Japanese suffered an even worse defeat. Their main battle fleet attacked an important American base called Midway Island. Again American warplanes beat them off with heavy losses. In the Battle of Midway the Japanese lost four aircraft carriers and many of their best pilots.

 

By the beginning of 1943 the Americans and their Australian and British allies had agreed upon a long-term plan to defeat the Japanese. They decided on a three-pronged attack. From Australia one prong would push northwards towards Japan through the Philippines. From Hawaii another prong would strike westwards through the islands of the central Pacific. Finally, the two Pacific offensives would be supported by a drive through Burma into the lands that the Japanese had conquered in Southeast Asia.

 

By June 1943, the Pacific offensives had begun. American forces advanced towards Japan by "island hopping" - that is, they captured islands that were strategically important, but bypassed others. In the remainder of 1943 and throughout 1944, Allied forces fought their way closer to Japan itself. In June 1944, an enormous American task force won control of the important Mariana Islands. In October American troops returned to the Philippines and cut off Japan from its conquests in Southeast Asia.

 

By 1945 Japan was within range of air attacks. American bombers made devastating raids on its cities. In June the island of Okinawa, less than 375 miles from the Japanese coast, fell to the Americans. American troops prepared to invade Japan itself.

 

But the invasion never came. On July 16, 1945, Allied scientists at work on the Manhattan Project tested the world's first atomic bomb. Even they were shocked by the result. They had invented the most destructive weapon the world had ever seen. On August 6 an American bomber dropped an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. A few days later, on August 9, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Both cities were devastated and nearly 200,000 civilians were killed. On August 14 the Japanese government surrendered. The Second World War was over.

 

Bryn O'Callaghan: An illustrated history of the USA; Longman, Harlow, 1990/1996, page 104 ff.