American and World War Two The Big Idea : World War Two would bring America center stage and make it a world leader. The Essential Question : In what ways did Americans prove that they were ready to do whatever was possible to defend the United States?
The Big Idea : World War Two would bring America center stage and make it a world leader. The Essential Question : In what ways did Americans prove that they were ready to do whatever was possible to defend the United States?. American and World War Two. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
American and World War Two
The Big Idea: World War Two would bring America center stage and make it a world leader.
The Essential Question: In what ways did Americans prove that they were ready to do whatever was possible to defend the United States?
December 8th 1941 The day after the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor America needed direction.
President Roosevelt knew that he needed to show strength in this time of national peril.
Privately however he expressed concern over fighting a war on two different fronts.
“I never wanted to have to fight this war on two fronts. We haven’t got the Navy to fight in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. . . . We will have to build up the Navy and the Air Force and that will mean we will have to take a good many defeats before we can have victory” – FDR to his wife.
American Might While Roosevelt was
worried about fighting a global war, Prime Minister Churchill was not.
He compared the American economy to a giant boiler.
He said “Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.
American Might America was still in the
Great Depression despite years of reform and New Deal programs.
WWII would help get America producing again and lift the Great Depression.
The war would prove to the world that America domestic force to be reckoned with.
American Production The United States rapidly
increased its war production after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
This increase was possible because Roosevelt had been preparing the nation for it.
After France fell to the Nazi’s Roosevelt declared a state of emergency and asked for more airplanes to be built.
American Production While many Americans were
still in favor of isolationism before Pearl Harbor, the attack on France shocked many.
They were willing to build up Americans own defenses.
By October of 1940 Congress was spending over 17 billion dollars on national defense.
American Production After the attack on Pearl
Harbor however, the U.S. began to do even more.
The Army-Navy munitions board began signing contracts with American companies.
The goal was to build new, state of the art aircraft, naval ships, and equipment.
The Economy Roosevelt believed that
business and government needed to work together in order to be successful.
He believed that it was a win-win situation.
Business would get money and the government would get war materials.
The Economy This meant that the
more a company produced the more they got paid.
So companies began to produce faster than ever.
This pumped money into the economy and weapons into the hands of soldiers.
The wartime “miracle” By early 1942 some 200,000
companies had converted to wartime production.
This increase meant more jobs and more money for average Americans, which helped end the depression.
All of these factors together made the wartime “miracle”.
American Might Americans would prove up
to the task of war production.
American workers were twice as productive as German workers and five times more productive than the Japanese.
This production would help give America the advantage in the war.
Mass Production The automobile industry
was uniquely suited for mass production.
For over 20 years these car factories became extremely effective at making things fast.
Car companies began producing tanks, jeeps, and even aircraft parts.
Mass Production
These car companies did not just make vehicles however.
They also built artillery, rifles, mines, and even helmets.
This fast paced production helped America and its allies in the war.
Henry Ford and the liberator
Henry Ford created an assembly line for the B-24 bomber.
By the end of the war this assembly built over 8,600 airplanes.
Overall the auto industry produced one-third of all military gear for the war.
Building an Army Now that America was
producing all this new equipment they needed men to use it.
In the weeks after Pearl Harbor over 60,000 men enlisted into the military.
The government also helped promote the Army and Navy through wartime recruitment posters.
Uncle Sam wants you Army recruiting stations
were flooded with men wanting to fight for their country.
So many men signed up that the Army did not have enough equipment to train all the soldiers at first.
The men were trained on wooden gun cutouts and threw rocks to simulate grenades.
Frank Capra Even though many young
Americans were eager to fight, their families were not happy to see them go.
So the government contracted a director named Frank Capra to let Americans know why they are fighting.