For prof Xavier

Reading Handout for Week 9

Chapter 23 – The Second World War at Home and Abroad 1939-1945

Key Terms:

· Selective Training and Service Act

· Lend-Lease bill

· Winston Churchill

· Atlantic Charter

· Joseph Stalin

· War Production Board

· Manhattan Project

· A. Philip Randolph

· Bracero program

· Rosie the Riveter

· Operation Overlord

· Battle of the Bulge

· Potsdam Declaration

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Discussion Questions:

1. How did Roosevelt and Congress aid the Allies following the German advances of early 1940?

2. Was the United States prepared for war when it entered World War II?

3. How did wartime production needs create a new relationship between government and business, and government and science?

4. What was the impact of the war on family life?

5. In what ways were American notions of civil liberties and basic freedoms tested during the war years?

6. How did racial and gender norms play out in the military during World War II?

7. Why did Truman opt to use the atomic bomb to help end the war, rather than negotiate a peace with Japan?

8. What factors brought the United States into the war?

9. What military, diplomatic, and social factors influenced decisions about how to fight the Second World War?

10. How did World War II transform the United States?

War propaganda encouraged women to support the war effort as production workers, nurses, and as volunteers in the military.

Technical Sergeant William E. Thomas and Private First Class Joseph Jackson on Easter Sunday in 1945. Americans served in all theaters during World War II, in segregated units. The U.S. armed forces were desegregated in 1948.

Housing barracks in a Japanese internment camp during the war.

Pro-Soviet propaganda. Films and posters were created in support for the Soviet Union. Political relations between the U.S. and Soviet Union were tense after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.

Propaganda was used to instill hatred and fear of the enemies and encourage Americans to support the war effort.

Picture of (from left to right) Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference in 1945.