essay
YIFU1216
6.WorldWarIandWorldWarII1917-19451.pptWAR I AND WORLD WAR II, 1917-1945
THE GREAT WAR, 1917-18
THE USA FLEXES ITS MUSCLES IN THE BIGGEST AND BLOODIEST CONFLICT IN HUMAN HISTORY
(Below) A Navy band leads a postwar victory parade in an American city.
AMERICA EXTENDS ITS MILITARY REACH
(Left) Men of the U.S. 332nd Infantry fight beside their allies in Italy, summer 1918. (Upper right) The destroyer USS Smith steams across the Atlantic. (Lower right) Four U.S. Army officers assigned to Siberia.
AN ARMY UNREADY FOR MODERN WAR
The outbreak of World War I found the U.S. Army still little more than a glorified frontier constabulary. In the year preceding America’s entry into the war, the U.S. Army’s major operation involved sending a Punitive Expedition consisting of 5,000 officers and men into Mexico to hunt down Pancho Villa and his bandits. (Below) Brigadier General John J. Pershing, commander of the Punitive Expedition, with his staff.
THE SELECTIVE SERVICE ACT OF 1917
(Upper left) President Woodrow Wilson before Congress in 1917. (Lower left) A group of white draftees. (Below) African-American conscripts bound for their training camp. Southern draft boards were less likely to grant blacks exemptions than whites.
THE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR ISSUE
(Upper left and right) A pamphlet decrying the persecution of conscientious objectors. (Lower right) E. E. Cummings, the American poet who wrote about the torture and murder of a conscientious objector. (Lower right) Draftees exhibit ferocious zeal during bayonet drill in their training camp.
4,800,000 AMERICAN MEN ENLISTED OR DRAFTED DURING THE WAR
MY IMMIGRANT DOUGHBOY GRANDFATHER
Private George Henry Pearson Urwin,
An Artilleryman with the U.S. 32nd Division.
THE ECONOMIC DEMANDS OF MOBILIZATION
Clothing, housing, arming, equipping and transporting America’s armed forces posed a seemingly insurmountable challenge.
GOVERNMENT COORDINATION OF PRIVATE INDUSTRY
(Lower left) Bernard Baruch, the Jewish stock broker who took charge of the War Industries Board. (Lower right) An American soldier and officer inspect some newly manufactured rifles. (Upper right) Two Doughboys with an American-made Browning .30-caliber machine gun.
UNPRECEDENTED GOVERNMENT REGULATION FOR THE WAR EFFORT
Posters put out by the Emergency Fleet Corporation of the United States Shipping Board and the U.S. Food Administration. The former promoted workplace cooperation and productivity, while the latter encouraged home gardening and discouraged waste.
RISING PRODUCTION INCREASES DRAFT CALLS
A company of Doughboys from Ohio.
600,000 DOUGHBOYS IN FRANCE BY MAY 1917
(Lower left) The color guard of the 16th U.S. Infantry Regiment prepared to parade through Paris, July 4, 1917 (Lower right) Two private from the U.S. 1st Division show they do not know how to pack their knapsacks during a trench exercise near Gondrecourt, July 1917. Three Doughboys man a Hotchkiss machine gun near Chateau Thierry.
A RUSHED INTRODUCTION TO STRANGE NEW WEAPONS
American soldiers had to learn how to handle rifle grenades (upper left), machine guns (lower left), trench guns (lower right), and tanks (upper right).
2,000,000 YANKS IN FRANCE AND READY TO FIGHT, SEPTEMBER 1918
(Lower left) General John J. Pershing, Commander of the American Expeditionary Forces. (Upper and lower right) Some of Pershing’s Doughboys in France in 1918.
VICTORY AT THE ST. MIHIEL SALIENT, SEPTEMBER 12-16, 1918
(Upper right) A French-made tank manned by an American crew goes “over the top” at St. Mihiel, September 12, 1918. (Lower left) American artillerymen fire on German positions. (Lower right) Some of the first German prisoners taken by the Yanks at St. Mihiel are escorted to the rear.
HARDER GOING IN THE MEUSE-ARGONNE OFFENSIVE
(Upper left) American infantrymen pinned down in the Argonne Forest. (Lower left) Doughboys cut down by German machine guns. (Lower right) Wounded Doughboys headed to the rear. Note the German soldier who is helping to carry the stricken American soldier in the background.
POORLY TRAINED REPLACEMENTS RUSHED TO THE FRONT
(Lower left) Newly arrived American troops debark in France. (Upper right) A column of Doughboys takes a break while marching to the front. (Lower right) Yanks prepare to fire rifle grenades toward German lines.
THE TOLL TAKEN BY AMERICAN LEADERSHIP FLAWS
Poor staff work by officers inexperienced with handling large forces caused massive traffic jams in the rear areas of the American Expeditionary Forces, and that greatly hampered Pershing’s logistics.
THE YANKS KEEP PUSHING
Despite heavy losses and other problems, American troops pushed forward and continued to push their German opponents, gaining considerable ground in the end – but the cost of glory was high.
ISOLATIONISM GRIPS THE USA, 1919-1940
(Below) An isolationist poster. (Upper right) Two isolationist buttons. (Lower right) Cartoonist Theodore Geisel – later known as Dr. Seuss – ridiculed the isolationist position in the face of the threat emanating from Adolf Hitler’s Germany.
THE ARMY SHRUNK AND STARVED FOR RESOURCES, 1920-1940
(Upper left) New Jersey National Guard cavalrymen charge through a simulated poison gas cloud, with both troopers and mounts wearing gas masks. (Lower left) New Jersey machine gunners practice the old art of using pack horses. (Lower right) GIs in World War I style helmets leap into action to emplace a Model 1917 water-cooled machine gun.
ROTC ESTABLISHED ON AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE CAMPUSES, 1920
AMERICA AGREES TO NAVAL LIMITS
In the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, the United States agreed to scrap its plans to build a large new fleet of modern battleships. Here is an aerial view of the battleship USS Wyoming in 1919.
A STARVED ARMY KEEPS ITS MIND ALIVE
(left) Colonel George C. Marshall led the effort to produce a generation of educated and mentally flexible Army officers. The Command at Staff School at Fort Leavenworth (upper right) and the Infantry School at Fort Benning (lower right).
THE U.S. ARMY AIR CORPS EMBRACES STRATEGIC BOMBING
Various views of the Boeing XB-17 bomber, the prototype for the B-17 “Flying Fortress.”
THE U.S. NAVY LOOKS TO THE PACIFIC FOR ITS NEXT WAR
Relegated to a support service transporting the American Expeditionary Forces and their supplies across the Atlantic during World War I, the U.S. Navy sought a dominant role in America’s next war by planning to fight Japan in the Pacific. With treaty limits on battleships, the Navy increased its air arm. Below a Marine Vought OU2-U Corsair prepares to land on the USS Saratoga in 1930.
SEND IN THE MARINES
U.S. Marines fighting Sandinista guerrillas in Nicaragua in the 1920s and 1930s.
THE MARINES FIND A NEW SPECIALTY
(Left) Major General Commandant John A. Lejeune encouraged a cadre of bright U.S. Marine officers to start developing a viable doctrine for amphibious warfare in the 1920s. (Right) Marines practice landing operations sometime in the 1930s.
A PRESIDENT POINTS OUT THE LOOMING STORM
(Right) President Franklin D. Roosevelt points to a potential trouble spot in the Pacific Ocean. (Below) The officers and men of Company H. 137th Infantry Regiment, 35th Infantry Division, Kansas National Guard, pose in front of this armory in Lawrence, Kansas, on reporting for mobilization in December 1940.
A RUSH TO PREPARE FOR WAR, 1940
(Upper left) American soldiers pause during a training exercise in Hawaii. (Lower left) The graduation photograph of a newly graduated platoon at the San Diego Marine Recruit Training Depot. (Below) A diagram from an Army infantry training manual.
AMERICA TRANSFORMS INTO A SUPERPOWER
Varied new forms of American force projection. (Left) An M4 Sherman tank roars across the Tunisian desert. (Upper right) An interior shot from a B-17 bomber in flight to bring death and destruction to Hitler’s Third Reich. (Lower left) The USS Essex, its flight deck crowed with aircraft, heads toward Japan across the Pacific.
DRAFTING A CITIZENS’ MILITARY
Draftees at Fort Dix, New Jersey, simultaneously receive smallpox and typhoid injections.
TURNING CIVILIANS INTO SOLDIERS
(Below) Newly inducted draftees at Fort Dix in their newly issued uniforms. (Upper right) Bayonet training at Fort Benning, Georgia. (Lower right) U.S. Army bombardiers perform daily calisthenics with the tools of their trade.
THE U.S. ARMY FIELDS ONLY 89 DIVISIONS INSTEAD OF 213
(Upper left) General Dwight David Eisenhower talks with paratroopers of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division on the eve of Operation OVERLORD. (Lower left) A machine-gun crew in western Germany. (Lower right) An 81mm mortar crew in action in Italy in January 1944.
THE ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY
An American artillery shell factory.
THE ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY STRATEGY PAYS OFF IN LOWER AMERICAN CASUALTIES
(Upper right) A dead Axis soldier of the Waffen SS.
WHO WON THE WAR?
A Soviet soldier plants his country’s flag above the German Reichstag in Berlin, April 30, 1945.
THE U.S. ARMY FAVORS A SHOWDOWN WITH GERMANY
American troops storm Omaha Beach, Normandy, France, June 6, 1944, amid scenes of death and destruction.
A BURNING DESIRE TO PUNISH JAPAN
The devastating Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor left many Americans eager to exact quick revenge on the island empire in the Pacific.
THE DRIVE ACROSS THE PACIFIC
(Upper left) The U.S. 2nd Marine Division takes Tarawa, November 1943. (Lower left) A U.S. Navy Corsair fighter scores a victory over
Rabaul in 1943. (Right) B-29 Super-fortress bombers rain death on Japan.
STRATEGIC BOMBING UNLEASHED
(Upper left) A B-17 bomber releases its payload over Germany. (Lower left) An American bombardier relaxes with a cigar as his B-29 bomber returns from a mission over Japan. (Below) Dresden, Germany, still in ruins after an American raid a year after the war.
THE WAR’S ATOMIC CLIMAX
(Lower left) Colonel Paul Tibbetts waves goodbye before flying off to drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. (Upper left) The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. (Upper right) The epicenter at Hiroshima. (Lower right) A male victim of the second A-bomb that hit Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
