U.S. DIPLOMACY
Private22
USDIPANDWWIIwithlecture.pptxUS DIPLOMACY AND WWII JAMES R. CORCORAN [email protected] © 2020
Page 1: WWII has been the biggest single event in world history. Some 50,000,000 human beings were killed, maybe ½ of them in combat, during the 8 years of that war (beginning in 1937, when Japan invaded and occupied China). That averages 6,250,000 people/year; approaching the total number killed in the 4 years of WWI. WWII was a fully industrialized war, and was near to what Clausewitz terms “total war,”; that term is overused, in the sense he coined it, but here for the first time in world history mass bombings of non-combatant civilians and missile strikes (Nazi V-1 & V-2 rockets) along with other ways to strike at civilian populations (nuclear/bio/chem), created a whole new framework for war. The material costs (globally) of that war are unmeasureable, but, various sources average out at over $300 Trillion=$300,000,000,000,000. This war was truly global (world war I was more limited globally). You, dear student, need to BE ADVISED that an even worse war is possible. 100 years ago, in 1912, the world did not anticipate the slaughter of WWI. What about today; do we see possibility of another world war in the next 5 to 10 years? America suffered the bombing of Pearl Harbor (and Wheeler Air Base, Schofield Barracks, Kaneohe Naval Air Station, Hickam, and Bellows Air Station; many don’t think about those places also being hit on December 7, 1941) and the attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and Pennsylvania in 2001. But, we have never undergone the horror of mass bombings or missile strikes. The last time our combat forces were attacked in a major way from enemy air was WWII. Are we vulnerable today?
Before we get to the diplomacy of WWII, we need to do the interwar years; 1920-1937/41.
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The Interwar years, 1920-1937/39
WW I
8 TO 10 MILLION BATTLE DEATHS
GERMAN INFRASTRUCTURE LEFT INTACT
GERMAN DOMESTIC SITUATION IN TURMOIL
VERSAILLES TREATY TO PREVENT A REPEAT
THE “ROARING TWENTIES” SAW A RECOVERY
Page 2: Please remember that WWI did not include incursions into Germany; so German infrastructure was not damaged by war. Many of my students in past courses (as well as fellow classmates and even professors) pictured Germany after WWI as it actually was at the end of WWII; flattened. The point is that Germany did not have to rebuild itself to prepare for the next war. Yes, the society was in turmoil because of the drain of WWI; but bridges, factories, highways, warehouses, railroads, public and private buildings, all were intact.
The Versailles Treaty was intended to bring a beneficial peace; but as you know it was derailed for all the reasons you have learned from the last lesson.
Still, the world economy, especially as driven by America’s booming industry, surged into a period of great international wealth. That period was called the “roaring 20s” because of the way the economy and the good times came “roaring” back after the war was ended.
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THE LULL BEFORE THE STORM
“In 1924 the [German] mark stabilized and the Weimar Republic entered a period of relative calm. Germany was admitted to the league of nations: she agreed to new plans on reparations…and cooperated in world affairs….economic recovery went ahead….the states of Europe agreed for a few years. The Soviet Union even concluded a pact with Germany in 1922. In the 1920s there was extensive economic collaboration between the Communist Government of the Soviet Union and the West.”
German reparations were abolished at the Lausanne Conference in 1932.
John Keegan, ed., Geographia: Atlas of the Second World War, 1996, 28-29
Page 3: Please STUDY this slide; absorb the information. I use the renowned military historian John Keegan because of his depth of research and mastery of that period of history. Contrary to what is frequently taught, Germany and the world were not in great crises during the 1920s. Yes, there was political turmoil in Germany in the vacuum created by the departure of the Kaiser and the monarchial government. Yes, the economy was still rebuilding after the huge drain of that massive war; people were out of jobs, a situation made worse by the return of millions of war vets; but there wasn’t the type of heavy desperation which has been used by Germans and others to justify Hitler’s takeover and starting WWII in Europe. Keegan explains that here and on the following few slides.
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THE LULL BEFORE THE STORM (CTD)
“ By the summer of 1929 the West returned to guarded optimism: the disasters following the First World War appeared to be at an end. The world’s economy was recovering, and internally, the various new states [nations] created after 1919 were becoming more stable. This situation came to an end in October 1929, when the US stock exchange on Wall Street dramatically collapsed. Now an unreal speculative boom turned into an equally unreal collapse. Exports everywhere ran down--by the Autumn of 1932 to one third of their level in 1929…unemployment… inadequate food production…factories closed….”
THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Keegan, 1996, 30
Page 4: The 1920s was the time of vast wealth on the part of big industrialists, Wall Street firms, banks, and investors; the “Great Gatsby” model (a great 1974 film of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book, starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow---hot The most recent version is OK with Leo DiCaprio and Carrey Mulligan; but the 1974 film was electric ). Recall, NO drinking; prohibition days (again, Robert Redford and Paul Newman in “The Sting” early 1970s, even better than The G.G.); but EVERYBODY did drink, just illegally; rather like today where just about everybody smokes “Mary Jane”, just illegally.
THEN,
The Great Economic Depression, the greatest economic crisis in world history (today, we are in the second greatest economic crisis, but we don’t have a 40% jobless rate, not all of us are living on the street, and the Wall Street bankers have not jumped from their high office buildings committing suicide as they did in the 1930s). THAT crises was brought about by cheating in the banks and corporation boardrooms, same as the 2008 Great Economic Recession. You may be interested that your professor, Dr. Jim, was born during the Great Depression and lived the early years of his life in that crisis (my greatest memory was the fear, anger, and bad moods of all the adults around me); times were tough.
The world went into a tailspin in the early 1930s and really, in America at least, did not come out of it until WWII; when EVERYBODY including Rosie the riveter went back to work in the war factories.
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THE LULL BEFORE THE STORM (CTD)
“The decade following the First World War [1919 to 1929; the Japanese Taisho government] saw Japan observe considerable restraint towards China and the Western Powers. This moderation , however , survived neither the emergence of the [Chinese] Nationalist Government in Nanking nor the onset of the Great Depression in 1929….a hardening nationalist [Japanese, Hirohito’s reign] view that Manchuria and Mongolia were natural areas of Japanese interest, led to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria [1931].”
Keegan, 34
Page 5: Please study this slide. During the 1920s Japan had a massive reawakening which included widespread acceptance of western cult rural influence, an active democracy with an elected legislature (called the Diet a German word for higher level deliberative body, e.g., the Diet of Worms in Germany in 1521; nothing to do with eating worms , a Dr. Jim joke), a legal court system; a working constitutional monarchy; this national system wasn’t perfect, but it appeared to all that Japan was on its way to joining the global system in a productive, beneficial way. What happened?
The remnant militarist faction (former Daimyo, Samurai, and Genro elder statesmen) were always present, waiting in the wings. The balance of progressionism in democracy and civil society submerged that faction during the halcyon 1920s. But, as the slide says, the global great economic depression hit and the movement toward democracy and civil society was splintered by discord and deprivation. The militarist faction took advantage of the national upset, began threats and assassinations to force the government and the people to militarize and to conform to the military and industry factions demand for authoritarianism at home and expansion abroad to gain and control natural resources which Japan lacked (coal, iron, oil, tin, rubber) to feed military aggression against all of Asia. The cry was “Asian for Asians” (i.e., expel foreign presence from Asia). The reality was “Asia for Japan”.
This came about in the transition from the Taisho Emperor to the Showa Dynasty Emperor Hirohito. His son Akihito, took the throne of Japan in 1989. Akihito’s son Naruhito, the present emperor, took the throne in May, 2019. Dear student, it may be of interest to you that your professor, Dr. Jim, actually met, shook hands with, and chatted with Akihito when he was still a Prince in 1953. I was on board the USS President Wilson seeing off high school classmates in Yokohama. Suddenly the call went out “everybody line up, Prince Akihito is here to visit”. As this 19 year-old Japanese heir to the throne approached me, a 15 year-old American teenager and we shook hands, he asked “how do you like my country?”. I replied , “I love your country and your people”, and knowing nothing about nothing, I in turn asked the Prince “how do you like your job?”. I caught on that I had broken dipolomatic protocol when his Japanese and American handlers visibly wilted. He was quite gracious and leaned toward me in a quieter voice and said “I like my job, but it is very busy ”. Most Japanese will go through their entire lives without physically laying eyes on the Emperor, much less get to shake hands and chat. I was in the right place at the right time and so I benefitted by that. Also, it was an early lesson in diplomacy. I unknowingly broke protocol. He diplomatically responded and we both were the better for it I think .
But, under his father, Hirohito’s rule, the nation of Japan, at the crossroads in 1929: choose democracy or militarism, chose militarism. The world was shook when Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria, all for the purpose of gaining control of northeastern China’s rich resources (iron, oil, minerals, timber, factories, and a slave labor Chinese workforce) to enable the Japanese war machine to proceed and, during the following decade, invade and occupy all East Asia, invading, occupying, and brutally controlling 13 other Asian nations as well as to declare the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere (GEACPS) which extended far out into the Pacific all the way to Midway island (before defeat by America in the battle of Midway in early June, 1942).
US DIPLOMACY AND WWII
JAPANESE INVASION OF MANCHURIA – SEP. 31, 1931
LEAGUE OF NATIONS OBJECTION
LYTTON COMMISSION
SOS STIMSON URGES CHINA & JAPAN TO SETTLE
JAPANESE ATTACK SHANGHAI – JAN. 1932
JAPANESE DECLARE MANCHUKO – FEB. 18, 1932
JAPAN WITHDRAWS FROM LON – MAR. 1933
JAPAN INVADES CHINA – JULY 7, 1937 = WAR
Page 6: The LON objected to Japan’s blatant aggression and even arranged an inquiry under Lord Lytton of England, which included an American observer even though the U.S. was not a member of the LON. At that time, knowing that the U.S. was staggering under the depression and also had an isolationist tendency which would preclude military force against Japan, SecState Simpson diplomatically asked China and Japan to settle amicably between themselves.
Meanwhile China proper (the mainland coastal area) boycotted Japanese goods, thereby enraging Japan which then attacked the main Chinese city of Shanghai, killing thousands of Chinese civilians, many by bombing from the air; the dawn of the strategy of bombing civilians to force a nation into submission.
Then, Japan set up a puppet government, totally subservient to Japan’s will, in Manchuria, forcing the last emperor of China, the Qing Dynasty Manchurian Henry Pu Yi, to take the role of the emperor of Manchukuo (recall the famed 1980s film, The Last Emperor).
With the Lytton report having condemned Japan’s acts in Manchuria, Japan withdrew as a member of the LON; walked out.
Four years later, Japan started WWII by invading the Chinese mainland.
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US DIPLOMACY AND WWII (CONTINUED)
HITLER AND NAZI EXPANSION
GERMANY WITHDRAWS FROM LON – OCT. 1933
AH REOCCUPIES THE RHINELAND – MAR. 1936
ROME-BERLIN-TOKYO AXIS – 1937
AH ANNEXES AUSTRIA – MAR. 1938
HITLER-STALIN NON-AGGRESSION PACT – AUG.
23, 1939
HITLER INVADES POLAND – SEP. 1, 1939 = WAR
Page 7: Really, people buried their heads in the sand when it came to the belligerency of Japan, Germany, and Italy. It’s OK to long for peace, but the lesson is: prepare for war, negotiate for peace. Adolf Hitler’s (AH) agenda was all laid out in his book Mein Kampf published in the 1920s; people paid little-to-no attention, or, didn’t want to face the possibility of Nazi Germany carrying out that agenda. The main ideas were Lebensraum (room to live in=Russia and parts of Europe), ubermensch (the German “race” superior to all others=elimination of the untermensch, the inferior people: Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, and other undesirables), Deutschland uber alles (Germany above all others). Hitler’s plan to achieve these ideas was to build Germany into a fortress (that cleared up unemployment) and build and employ the most powerful military in the world to be used to carry out his plans. The huge crowds at rallies and the millions volunteering for military service demonstrated that Adolf, our corporal from WWI, did not do this all by himself; he had the willing support and cooperation from the masses of the German people.
Germany’s walk-out of the League of nations (the same year as Japan quit the LON) in protest to the LON daring to question his expansionary actions, as early as 1933, should have alerted the world that he was headed for war, which he started in Europe by invading Poland six years later. Having gotten away with that he went further as shown on this slide. The formation of the axis was cause for great trepidation to the west and to America; scary, they were ganging up. Still, little movement to prepare to go to war.
Hitler’s pact with Stalin stunned the world. We now know that AH had no intention of keeping his word. At that time, Stalin was counting on it. The agreement opened the gate for Hitler and Stalin to attack and divvy up poor little old Poland. England and France had a treaty of alliance with Poland, which triggered the Brits and the French to declare war on Hitler’s Nazi Germany; WWII was begun in Europe, 2 years after it had begun in Asia with Japan’s attack on the Chinese Mainland.
The world was now at WAR.
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JAPANESE INVASION OF MANCHURIA – SEP. 31, 1931
LEAGUE OF NATIONS OBJECTION
LYTTON COMMISSION
SecState STIMSON URGES CHINA & JAPAN TO SETTLE
JAPANESE ATTACK SHANGHAI – JAN. 1932
JAPANESE DECLARE MANCHUKO – FEB. 18, 1932
JAPAN WITHDRAWS FROM LON – MAR. 1933
JAPAN INVADES CHINA – JULY 7, 1937 = WAR
HITLER AND NAZI EXPANSION
GERMANY WITHDRAWS FROM LON – OCT. 1933
HITLER REOCCUPIES THE RHINELAND – MAR. 1936
ROME-BERLIN-TOKYO AXIS – 1937
HITLER ANNEXES AUSTRIA – MAR. 1938
HITLER-STALIN NON-AGGRESSION PACT – AUG. 23, 1939
HITLER INVADES POLAND – SEP. 1, 1939 = WAR
SIDE-by-SIDE COMPARISON OF BELIGERANTS’ ACTIONS TOWARD WAR
Page 8: This slide is a side-by-side comparison of the belligerents’ (warmakers) actions which led the world to war. This is a compilation by Dr. Jim of the previous two slides as a way of demonstrating the progression toward war (the dates don’t line up across the slide, but the road to world war is made clear by the side-by-side comparison).
US DIPLOMACY AND WWII (CONTINUED) US POSTURE (CONTINUED)
ECONOMIC DEPRESSION DEPRESSES US REACTION
US MILITARY AT WEAKEST STATE
FDR AND SecState STIMSON SEEK PEACEFUL SETTLEMENTS
US NEUTRALITY ACT - 1939
AH INVADES, OCCUPIES FRANCE – MAY 1940
US BEGINS THE DRAFT; LEND-LEASE; MAR. 1941
Page 9: America had allowed its military to fall into disrepair after “the war to end all wars”. George S. Patton, who was promoted to Colonel in WWI, reverted to his prior rank of CAPTAIN during the interwar period. Eisenhower, who had not made it to that war, was a major for 13 years . America ranked around 50th among the militaries of the world. That situation would of course prompt the President and his SecState to work for peace on the international scene.
After AH started WWII in Europe by invading Poland, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) declared America as neutral in any war going on. AH, just like most bullies, if they get away with it once they will do more until stopped, then invaded poor France (1940); the land of great wine, world class cuisine, and most beautiful women (not necessarily in that order).
FDR sensed that Americans would not back going to war; and he was correct. He did begin the draft (through Congress) and he began lendlease, a program which allowed the transfer of U.S. war materiel to selected nations in return for port access, deferred payments, and other returns.
You may be interested that your professor, Dr. Jim’s father was activated as a CT National Guardsman in 1940, and went off for training that year, was immediately deployed to Asia after Pearl Harbor the following year, and spent the next 3 ½ years fighting the Japanese in New Guinea and the Philippines; I didn’t see him for five years. He was at horse cavalry NCO school, Ft. Riley KS, when PH broke. The class all graduated as second lieutenants not as E-5s. He came back from the war in Asia 4 years later as a MAJOR (and took the GED). He got out of the Guard until the Berlin air crisis in 1948; and then, was one of the first activated for the Korean war in 1950 (as a Lt.Col., battalion commander)!! So, during his fifteen years of active duty as a National Guardsman, he spent nearly five in war. That was how it was in those days of national emergency. The pressure was on. All during WWII we had no assurance (day-in and day-out), that we would be able to overcome the two most powerful military forces in world history up to that time; the Nazi Whermacht, and the Japanese Imperial Military, plus Fascist Italy and some others, all of whom now controlled Asia, Europe, and North Africa; America’s back was against the wall. Our ally France was occupied by the Nazis, and England was under regular air attack from the Nazis; the psychological pressure was immense.
This was a duel to the death.
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US DIPLOMACY AND WWII (CONTINUED) US POSTURE (CONTINUED)
Bailey, 1980, 722
Page 10: Congress signed the Lend lease act which allowed expenditure of an ultimate $50 Billion (some trillions in today’s dollars) in military equipment to go to various nations in the world which were under attack by Germany, Italy, and Japan . FDR declared that America had to become the arsenal for democracy.
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US DIPLOMACY AND WWII (CONTINUED)
FDR 3rd TERM, AND THE ATLANTIC CHARTER
JAPAN MOVES INTO VIETNAM, S.E.A.
FDR LIMITS PETROLEUM AND METALS TO JAPAN, 1941
FDR FREEZES ALL JAPANESE ASSETS, JULY 25, 1941
JAPAN AND US - CAT AND MOUSE DIPLOMACY
JAPAN ATTACKS PEARL HARBOR – DEC. 7, 1941
CHINA, 1894; RUSSIA, 1904; US 1941
Page 11: In the emergency of the times, the American voters gladly put FDR in for another term. He then carried out a secret meeting with the beleaguered English Prime Minister Winston Churchill in August 1941 to arrange for cooperation in the face of German, Italian, and Japanese aggression, an 8 point agreement which would be called, unofficially, the Atlantic Charter, and other forms of planning and cooperation within the limits of U.S. power to act without actually being at war.
When Japan concluded a five year treaty of neutrality with the Soviet Union, thereby freeing Japanese forces from the Russian front in Manchuria and China and enabling Japan to take over Vietnam to choke off international support to China, FDR responded by restricting petroleum and scrap iron supplies from the U.S. to Japan. Japan needed that material to support its takeovers in Asia. While the U.S. continued diplomatic activity with Japan to sort out the differences, Japan was only playing around because it had already decided to go to war by invading Southeast Asia (the Philippines, Malaya (Malaysia), Singapore, and Indonesia, etc.) to gain control over tin, rubber, and oil needed to support its war plans.
Japan attacked Pearl Harbor without any declaration of war because it wanted to eliminate any interference from the U.S. Pacific Fleet when Japanese forces attacked south into Southeast Asia. Again this was the third “sneak attack” by Japan on a nation which was not engaged in war: China, 1895; Russia (in China) 1904; the U.S. 1941. Could we not have learned from that history? Americans (in and out of government and business) knew and understood much less about other nations and cultures in those days than we do today. Also, our cyber age puts information literally at our fingertips. In those days, the public only received information by print and radio; even in my days in Amembs in Dhaka and Jakarta in the 1970s and 1980s we were still communicating with the Sate Department, the Pentagon, and CINCPAC by telegraph/telegram and the diplomatic pouch (bags of material flown by shuttle to WADC under guard by an armed courier); it could take up to three weeks for a report or query to reach WADC. YOU, dear student, live in an age of magic . I earned a BS in science in the 1950s/1960s from West Point by using a slide rule (check it out: http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/10/22/356937347/the-slide-rule-a-computing-device-that-put-a-man-on-the-moon); hand-held electronic calculators didn’t come into use until the 1970s. In 1980/81/82 I commanded a 105mm Howitzer Battalion in the 9th Infantry Division when we were still calculating fire missions by hand using the “slipstick” (slide rule adapted to FA calculations). YOU, meanwhile can just highlight and retype any changes you want to make on your essays. WE had to type the entire essay all over again if we wanted to change, add, or delete something. We now live in an age of unimagined science/technological progress. The question is: have we humans kept abreast of that SciTech progress? Do we effectively know/understand more than we did in decades past? What is Bart Simpson doing right this minute ?
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US DIPLOMACY AND WWII (CONTINUED)
WORLD WAR II AND THE US
US DECLARES WAR ON JAPAN – DEC. 8, 1941
AH AND ITALY DECLARE WAR ON US – DEC. 11, 1941
THE “EUROPE FIRST” STRATEGY
DECLARATION OF THE UN – JAN. 1, 1942
FLYING TIGERS, THE BIG FIVE, “UNCLE JOE”
Page 12: You may be interested that your Professor, Dr. Jim, remembers, as a boy, hearing the radio reports (this was before TV) of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and President Roosevelt’s radio broadcast of the war message to Congress. Of course I didn’t understand the full meaning of those events, but I distinctly remember the setting in my home and that the adults around me were scared, angry, and sad; the U.S. was now at war; I did understand that!! . Germany and Italy only declared war on the U.S. as a way to show off; they figured that Japan would sink America. BIG MISTAKE. The U.S. and its allies made the strategic decision to attack in Europe first and after that was finished off to turn on Japan. Some, including me question that decision, BUT, no one can argue with success and the U.S. and its allies won the war, so it must have been a sound decision. Dr. Jim’s second rule: “nothing succeeds like success” ; you can quote me on that.
The idea of the United Nations was an extension, first of President Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points and League of Nations, then the “8 points” which came out of the Atlantic Conference and the accompanying Atlantic charter discussed on slide 9 above.
The Flying Tigers (飛虎隊) were an important initiative by the U.S. to assist China, before the War began, and then during the War, against Japanese air and ground attacks. It was a “semiofficial” set-up by the U.S. government whereby active duty U.S. Army Air Corps (USAF was established in 1947 after the war) pilots could volunteer for the American Volunteer Group (AVG, the Flying Tigers) and fight against the Japanese in China and Burma. The deal was that those pilots could later return to the U.S. AAC and resume their active duty with advancement for promotion as though they had never left, to include advancement in pay grade. This was as much a diplomatic action as it was a military operation.
Spinning off of that was the establishment of the Big Five, the U.S.; Great Britain; France; Russia; and China [the five which just happen to make up the UN Security Council today; a veto by any one of the five defeats any action by the UNSC]. FDR brought China in as a way to open a strategic second front against Imperial Japan. Unfortunately Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist government, under his Nationalist Party the Kuomintang=KMT was more interested in preparing to battle Chairman Mao’s Chinese Communist party for control over China after the Japanese were defeated by the Americans. Please note, dear student, that it was the Americans who defeated Japan. England was busy over in the Indian ocean region, tinkering with its former colonies India and Burma; a side show to the major battle arena, the Pacific, where the center of gravity of all the Japanese forces were fighting. China didn’t help in any significant way except to keep Japanese garrison troops in-country and they couldn’t be used in other combat theaters. The Soviet Union, under the dictatorship of Joseph “Uncle Joe” Stalin, maintained its neutrality treaty with Japan (as covered earlier) ALL during WWII, and craftily declared war on Japan two days AFTER America dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The Russians never fought the Japanese during WW II; they kept the neutrality treaty with Japan all during the war. So when that gangster, Stalin, accuses the U.S. of not puling our share by stalling to open a second front in Europe, the reply should have been “where the hell are you in the war against the Japs, Uncle Joe? AWOL; you Russians are only fighting one member of the axis, the Germans; us ‘Mericans (and Brits) are fighting all THREE main axis members, Germany, Japan, and Italy, so enough of your bellyaching about us not pulling our share, we’ll open the second front against the Nazis when we get the upper hand in other areas.” Stalin waited until after Hiroshima to do away with the neutrality treaty and join the allies against Japan. That way the Russians were able to get in on the post-war benefits (Manchuria, North Korea north of the 38th parallel, the Kurile islands of Northern Japan, Sakhalin island, and aegis over Mongolia) without even engaging in combat with the Japanese; smart!! Why did the U.S. and England let them get away with it? Because the U.S.S.R. was our close ally whose role was vital in defeating Nazi Germany. It wasn’t until after the war that we realized that the Stalin gang couldn’t be trusted.
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US DIPLOMACY AND WWII (CONTINUED) WORLD WAR II AND THE US (CONTINUED)
Bailey, 1980, 750
Page 13: This was the line-up of the control of Europe and North Africa during the first year of America’s war in Europe. We had no foothold, and we were going to have to fight mightily to gain access to the continent to engage the enemy. While eastern North Africa was held by the Nazis (under the Command of General Erwin Rommel, the “Desert Fox”), the western region of North Africa was under the control of the occupied French Vichy government, controlled by the Nazis.
Switzerland, Spain, and Spanish Morocco were neutral; no help there.
The only ally you see on this map is England, and it was under constant attack and threat.
The situation was grim.
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US DIPLOMACY AND WWII (CONTINUED)
FDR, CHURCHHILL, STALIN
WASHINGTON CONFERENCE – MAY 1943
QUEBEC CONFERENCE – AUGUST 1943
MOSCOW CONFERENCE – OCT, 1943
Page 14: The diplomacy of WWII centered on these and other wartime conferences. Your text covers interwar diplomacy, which you are free to delve into beyond that which I have touched on; after all: those rounds of diplomacy failed. Also, your text covers American-Japanese diplomatic maneuvering (which is just what that was, maneuvering) leading up to the attack on Pearl harbor; but Japan was bent on war all along and was using diplomacy as a way to buy time to launch that war.
Here you have the Big Three wrestling with the knotty challenges of combined operations (military operations with two or more nations involved) while perfecting their own joint operations (military operations with two or more services of the same nation) required to be melded into grand strategy (ends+ways+means to win the war as differentiated from military strategy (ends+ways+means to win the war in a theater of operations, or hemisphere, thereby implementing grand strategy).
The Washington Conference firmed up cooperative activities between Churchill and FDR (involving staff cooperation within the Combined Chiefs of Staff (primarily the U.S. and GB, but later with other nations involved; especially tricky because of the tendency to override national staffs).
The decision by America and England to launch a major invasion of Europe (“D-Day”), resulted from the Quebec conference.
Moscow was held between the big three foreign ministers (U.S., Sec State), Hull (U.S.), Eden (GB), and Molotov (USSR), and was the first major face-face between the three powers. This was when Stalin pledged that he would enter the war against Japan (i.e., BREAK his neutrality treaty) after the end of the fighting in Europe. This conference was a major diplomatic breakthrough in that the big three were brought together in a purposeful, unified manner. But, note, that wasn’t until nearly two years after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.
Go to page 208, Paterson, “Major Wartime Conferences, 1941-1945” for a complete rundown on conferences AND what each accomplished.
These conferences are key to allied success.
They are also prime examples of diplomacy during wartime.
ALL DMS students should have this information at their fingertips (make a copy of that page and have it handy for all of your courses; believe me, when you are in MADMS, you will thank me).
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US DIPLOMACY AND WWII (CONTINUED)
GRAND STRATEGY SUMMITS
CAIRO – NOV. 1943 (WC & CKS)
UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER
TEHERAN – NOV/DEC, 1943
FDR GETS 4th TERM – 1944
YALTA: FDR / WC / JS – FEB, 1945
Page 15: While WWII was at its maximum level of activity, really all around the world, the diplomatic engagements between the allied powers proceeded apace: diplomacy activities and military operations carried out at the same time (hence HPU’s undergraduate and graduate academic major of Diplomacy and Military Studies).
The foundation for grand strategy deliberations was laid by the previous Moscow conference.
The Cairo Conference mainly focused on the “Far East” (Asia; “East” of Europe and “West” of America) and included Nationalist China’s Chiang Kai-shek in partial deliberations with Churchill and FDR. Unconditional surrender was agreed upon for Japan, nothing less. Also, Japan would be forced back into its “home Islands” and out of ALL the territories it occupied in Asia and the Pacific. Formosa (Taiwan islands) and Manchuria were to be returned to Nationalist China. Korea was to be held under “mandate” by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. until it could establish its own state in the vacuum left by the Japanese withdrawal.
The capital of Iran (Persia), Teheran, was the setting for the next conference and was the history making site of the face-to-face meeting of Churchill, FDR, and Stalin; (“BIG fixin’s” as my Grandma would say ). The invasion of the European continent on the coast in France, and at the same time the massive Soviet offensive against the Nazis was the major outcome of Teheran.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to a fourth term in 1944; again a history-making event. America and its allies were winning the war, the U.S. was full up with war jobs (Rosie the Riveter and all that; American women were vitally instrumental in America’s success, filling positions from aircraft builders to steeplejacks, to piloting aircraft to departure points for overseas, to auto mechanics, welders, and everything in between).
FDR met again with Churchill and Stalin at Yalta on the Crimean Sea. Here the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany was agreed on. Kept secret was the agreement that the defeated Germany would be divided into four zones of occupation under the U.S., the UK, Russia, and France. A date was set to launch the United Nations. Other agreements were made, as mentioned previously, such as Soviet occupation of Japan’s northern islands, the Kuriles (which Russia still holds today, in constant anger from Japan), Sakhalin Island, and a mandate over Korea north of the 38th parallel (see the map on the next slide).
The outcomes of these vital conferences were not all efficacious; but one must put oneself back into those situations and times; never before had these kind of GLOBAL plans been attempted, the men involved were: merely men. But the goings-on at these, and even later, conferences are classics in the study of American and international diplomacy.
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US DIPLOMACY AND WWII (CONTINUED) GRAND STRATEGY SUMMITS
Bailry, 1980, 765
Page 16: This map displays some of the issues discussed in the previous slide.
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Unknown
Page 16: The next three maps are designed to provide an overview of the war in Europe and Asia.
Here you can see the tremendous challenge the allies were faced with. The goal of wresting back enemy-occupied territories was psychologically overwhelming. America was the only allied nation with the resources and the power to operate in both theaters of war in a strategically decisive manner. The other allies were vitally dependent on the U.S. for war resources; FDR’s “Arsenal of Democracy”. The U.S. alone, of all the major powers on this planet, would emerge intact and stronger at the end of this global conflagration; in 1945, the most powerful nation on earth.
Go full screen and study this map
Page 18; This map provides the overview of successful allied war fighting in the European Theater. Recall that 5-star General, Eisenhower (who had not seen combat until he was a general), and then not, of course, actual combat, was the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). He performed brilliantly and turned out to be the perfect choice for the job. One could say that he was more diplomatic than military; but it was HE and only he that had the responsibility for the decision to launch D-Day. Again, “BIG fixin’s”.
Again, go full screen and study this map.
US DIPLOMACY AND WWII (CONTINUED) WORLD WAR II AND THE US (CONTINUED)
Page 19: This map provides the overview of America’s successful victory over the Japanese military machine.
The key to America’s victory was its ability to conduct joint operations at the three levels of war (do you remember them? What are the three levels of war?).
For sure, go full screen and study this map.
Note the British action in the west against Burma. See the “Burma Road”. See Nimitz advances in the Central Pacific, 1943-44-45. MacArthur's advances in the SW Pacific, 1943-44-45.
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US DIPLOMACY AND WWII (CONTINUED)
WAR AND PEACE
BRETTON WOODS – JULY 1944
DUMBARTON OAKS – OCT., 1944
Page 20: The economic and political mess of the world coming out of the rubble of this world war required ER type attention and these two conferences addressed that challenge.
Bretton Woods, in New Hampshire, U.S.A., officially termed the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference and set up a loan system to stabilize recovering economies along with a World Bank to make loans to rebuild nations.
The conference at Dumbarton Oaks, on the outskirts of WADC, basically framed the UN organization and laid the groundwork for the 1945 UN conference in San Francisco. The concept of the UN Security Council (today’s five member council which allows for the UN to take action on key issues before that body).
[The three levels of war=strategic, operational, tactical.]
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US DIPLOMACY AND WWII (CONTINUED)
HOT WAR TO COLD WAR
FDR DIES – APRIL 12, 1945 – HST
VE DAY – MAY 7, 1945
HST / POTSDAM JULY-AUG., 1945
HIROSHIMA – AUG. 6, 1945
STALIN DECLARES WAR ON JAPAN – AUG. 8, 1945
NAGASAKI – AUG 9, 1945
JAPAN SURRENDERS – VJ DAY – AUG. 14, 1945
THE REAL RUSSIA STANDS UP, US WAKES UP
Page 21: None of us knew that the “hot” war would soon morph into a “cold” war (with none of the major powers actually shooting at each other which made it “cold”). We were all stunned that our close ally, Russia, suddenly took provocative actions (such as taking over the East European satellite nations, blocking access to Berlin and East Germany, derailing UN Security Council actions through veto, siding with the newly formed Communist People’s Republic of China, and prompting North Korea, and later Communist China to attack South Korea where the U.S. only maintained a small military advisory group (JUSMAAG-K).
Maybe the U.S. wasn’t all pure intentioned during those years, but there were honest intentions on the part of U.S. citizens, who hung in there through that horrible war, to make something good and lasting out of the peace. Soviet dictatorship, ruling over the Russian people had the intention to aggrandize itself over all others; not that much different than the Nazi, Japanese, Italian, or later the Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Cuban and other dictatorships.
You may be interested to know that your professor, Dr. Jim, 9 years old, was busy making himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the kitchen of his home at 280 Main Street, Rocky Hill CT, on a beautiful spring afternoon, when the announcement of the death of our most beloved President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, came over the radio. It was up to me to spread the news to family, friends, and neighbors. America exuded a massive outcry of grief. U.S. citizens lined the sides of the railroad along which FDR’s funeral train transported his remains to his home estate in upper New York.
And, none of us could remember the name of the Vice President who was to fill President Roosevelt’s shoes. Harry S. Truman, in the years to come, between just prior to VE day and his reelection in 1948, would, quickly, let us know who he was with a splash. It was he who made the agonizing decision to drop the two atom bombs on Japan; he who now stood up to Stalin’s aggression, he who created the U.S. Department of Defense (no longer the “War Department”), the CIA, the USAF, and other game changing moves with his National Security Act of 1947.
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WW II (ctd)
The largest single event in human history
Civilians= ½ of 50 million killed 1937-1945
Organized exterminations of humans: Europe and Asia
Largest movement of people across the globe
Largest, continuous, economic effort ever
Revived the Great Depression economies
Governments controlled war activities and money
Germany, Britain, Japan, USSR shattered by war
U.S. economy increased by 50%; single winner
No equivalent wars since 1945
Page 22: This is my best summarization of this lesson. More could be added.
WW II (ctd)
Axis (Germany/Italy/Japan)
vs.
Allies (U.S./Britain/China/USSR)
Fascist Germany/Italy/Japan
Soviet Marxist dictatorship
The Democracies
A transitioning China
Total War (civilian roles/attacks on civilians)
WW II set the stage for the Cold War (1945-1991)
Page 23: This sets the stage for the next phase of our U.S. diplomatic history.
“Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
~~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
~~To Congress, 8 December, 1941
~ End ~
Page 24: I remember these words being said over the radio in our home.
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Terms to Know
| Great Economic Depression | Diet | Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere (GEACPS) |
| belligerency | Mein Kampf | Lebensraum |
| ubermensch | Deutschland uber alles | lendlease, |
| Werhmacht | the Atlantic Charter | treaty of neutrality with the Soviet Union |
| diplomatic pouch | Big Five | Chiang Kai-shek’s |
| the Kuomintang=KMT | Big Three | combined operations |
| joint operations | grand strategy | military strategy |
| Combined Chiefs of Staff | Unconditional surrender | UN Security Council |
| National Security Act of 1947 |
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