Why does america enter ww2

During World War II, 4-H members contributed to the war effort in many ways—through military service, as well as efforts on the home front. Robert Riskin, head of the Bureau of Motion Pictures, was responsible for creating Projections of America , a documentary film series that became one of the most important propaganda initiatives of World War II.

While the war provided opportunities for soldiers to foster their sense of manhood, the postwar years and peacetime preferred the husband and father ideal while also finding ways to deal with injured or psychologically traumatized veterans. The Great Debate. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Like this article? Read more in our online classroom. Home Front. From the Collection to the Classroom. Article Type. Scientists became political activists in the debate over control of atomic energy. After all, Congress had only recently allowed for the enactment of the Lend-Lease Act. It was also the same Congress that had sat idly by and let the world descend into chaos.

Therefore, convincing them to take action was going to be an uphill battle, to say the least. An interesting side-note, there was still one Congress member that voted against America entering the war. Nevertheless, the remaining members of Congress relented and finally allowed for American intervention in the war.

Hitler announces the declaration of war against the United States to the Reichstag. Retrieved on February 5th, World War II This history or website is a very important website. It tells us about the war. Not only that but this is some of the stuff that goes with the "The Dairy Of Anne frank" and tells us something went down back of the day.

Be thankful that you guys didn't have to deal with it.. It was an absolute pleasure reading your article. This insight will really contribute to a lot towards my history essay and I really appreciate the help. But in in reality Hitler was simply reading the future correctly, that Stalin was coming after Germany first; and he was simply engaged in a preemptive strike.

But that's politically incorrect, so it's banned from vict0r-written-history books. In reality, it was Britain that was stupid to declare war on Germany, rather than let the two fight it out; but FDR obviously made secret promises of Lend-Lease in order to spur Britain into being his errand-boy, so he could count on German counter-attacks to keep his promise to keep the US going to war, by doing everything in his power to make the war come to the US instead.

And as victor-written history shows, it was a rousing success: as well as proof of the motto "absolute power corrupts absolutely My Dad told me about a lot of this stuff. He was a medic and would have to go and get, sometimes badly injured, soldiers in the midst of all the fighting.

But He never got shot or even lost a limb. The stories he use to tell us! It was an amazing war. Great article! So Britain was completely on its own against a hostile or neutral Europe for about a year before Hitler was stupid enough to attack the Soviets.

Cute Whitewash of FDR's consistently brazen warmongering. It is a matter of record that he unilaterally initiated many acts of war against the Axis powers for YEARS while simultaneously reassuring the American people he was opposed to US involvement in any war. Any FDR apologist who claims his motivation was altruistic is proven a liar by the historic record. He also forgot to pay any attention to China once he had his war. And he managed to gain control of the Empire that a few years earlier was British.

If that wasn't enough Great Britain was left bankrupted by ww2. Only decent thing to happen was FDR's demise. Very detailed and thorough Hub. Great pictures and graphics as well. I look forward to reading more of your Hubs. Marine Biology. Electrical Engineering. Computer Science. Medical Science. Writing Tutorials. Performing Arts. Visual Arts. Student Life. Vocational Training. Standardized Tests. Online Learning.

Social Sciences. Legal Studies. Political Science. Welcome to Owlcation. Related Articles. By Eric Caunca. By Doug West. By Rupert Taylor. By Linda Crampton. By Kelley Marks. It would take two more years and millions more human lives for Hitler and his cronies to accept this truth, giving up in their quest to terrorize the free world into submitting to their heinous, hate-filled, and genocidal regime.

The next major American-led offensive was the invasion of France, also known as Operation Overlord. This is because the fall of France had made the US realize the seriousness of the situation in Europe and dramatically increase the appetite for war. As a result, when formal declarations first came in December , the goal was always to invade and regain France before crashing into the German mainland and starving the Nazis of their source of power.

This made D-Day the much-anticipated beginning of what many believed would be the final phase of the war. After securing a costly victory at Normandy, the Allied forces were finally on mainland Europe, and throughout the summer of , Americans — working with large contingents of British and Canadian soldiers — fought their way through France, into Belgium and the Netherlands.

Stopping Hitler, though, allowed Allied forces to move further east into Germany, and when the Soviets entered Berlin in , Hitler committed suicide and the German forces issued their formal, unconditional surrender on May 7th of that year. While most American soldiers would soon return home, many remained in Germany as an occupying force while peace terms were negotiated, and many more remained in the Pacific hoping to soon bring the other war — the one still being waged against Japan — to a similar conclusion.

The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, thrust the United States into war with Japan, but most people at the time believed victory would be had quickly and without too heavy a cost. This turned out to be a gross miscalculation of both the capabilities of the Japanese military and its zealous commitment to fight.

Victory, as it happened, would only come after the blood of millions had been spilled into the royal blue waters of the South Pacific.

This first became clear in the months following Pearl Harbor. Japan managed to follow up their surprise attack on the American naval base in Hawaii with several other victories throughout the Pacific, specifically at Guam and the Philippines — both American territories at the time. The fight over the Philippines was an embarrassing defeat for the US — some , Filipinos died or were captured, and around 23, Americans were killed — and demonstrated that defeating the Japanese was going to be more challenging and costly than anyone had predicted.

After the Philippines, the Japanese, as most ambitious imperial countries who have experienced success would do, began trying to expand their influence. They aimed to control more and more of the islands of the South Pacific, and plans even included an invasion of Hawaii itself.

Up until this moment, the United States had failed to stop its enemy. But this was not the case at Midway. This set the stage for a series of United States victories that would turn the tide of war in favor of the Americans. The next major American victory came at the Battle of Guadalcanal , also known as the Guadalcanal Campaign, which was fought over the course of the fall of and winter of These victories allowed the United States to march slowly north towards Japan, reducing its influence and making an invasion possible.

But the nature of these victories made the idea of invading the Japanese mainland a terrifying thought. More than , Americans had died fighting the Japanese throughout the Pacific, and part of the reason for these high casualty numbers was because almost all battles — which took place on small islands and atolls scattered throughout the South Pacific — were fought using amphibious warfare, meaning soldiers had to charge onto a beach after landing a boat near the shore, a maneuver that left them completely exposed to enemy fire.

Doing this on the shores of Japan would cost an unfathomable number of American lives. Plus, the tropical climate of the Pacific made life miserable, and soldiers had to deal with a wide range of diseases, such as malaria and dengue fever. It was the perseverance and success of these soldiers in spite of such conditions that helped the Marine Corps gain prominence in the eyes of American military commanders; eventually leading to the creation of the Marines as a distinct branch of the United States Armed Forces.

All of these factors meant that in the spring and early summer of , American commanders were seeking an alternative to an invasion that would bring World War II to a hasty close. Options included a conditional surrender — something few wanted as this was seen as being too lenient on the Japanese — or the continued firebombing of Japanese cities. But advances in technology had given rise to a new type of weapon — one that was far more powerful than anything ever used before in history, and by , American leaders were seriously discussing using it to try and close the book on the war with Japan.

One of the most prominent and pressing things that made the war in the Pacific so challenging was the Japanese manner of fighting. Kamikaze pilots defied all ideas of self-preservation by committing suicide via ramming their planes into American ships — causing tremendous damage and leaving American sailors to live in constant fear. To put it in perspective, more than 2 million Japanese soldiers died in their many campaigns across the Pacific.

As a result, American officials knew that to win the war in the Pacific, they had to break the will of the people and their desire to fight. And the best way they could think to do this was to bomb Japanese cities to smithereens, killing civilians and hopefully pushing them to get their leaders to sue for peace. Japanese cities at the time were constructed mainly using wood, and so napalm and other incendiary weapons had a tremendous effect.

This approach, which was carried out over the course of nine months in —, after the United States had moved far enough North in the Pacific to support bomber raids on the mainland, produced some , Japanese civilian casualties.

Insanely, this massive loss of human life did not seem to phase Japanese leadership, many of whom believed death not their own, obviously , but those of Japanese subjects was the ultimate sacrifice to be made for the emperor. So, despite this bombing campaign and a weakening military, Japan in mid showed no signs of surrendering. The United States, eager as ever to end the war as quickly as possible, elected to use atomic weapons — bombs possessing never-before-seen destructive potential — on two Japanese cities: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

They killed , people immediately and tens of thousands more in the years after the bombings — as it turns out nuclear weapons have rather long-lasting effects, and by dropping them, the United States subjected residents of these cities and surrounding areas to death and despair for decades after the war. Considering that the bombings took place on August 6th and August 8th, , and Japan indicated its desire to surrender only days later, on August 15th, , this narrative appears to check out.

The ends had justified the means. We can suspect something fishy largely because the United States wound up accepting a conditional surrender from Japan that allowed the emperor to retain his title something the Allies had said was completely off the table before the bombings , and also because the Japanese were likely far more concerned about a Soviet Invasion in Manchuria a region in China , which was an initiative that began in the days between the two bombings.

Some historians have even argued that this was what really forced Japan to surrender — not the bombs — meaning this ghastly targeting of innocent human beings had pretty much no impact on the outcome of the war at all. Instead, it merely served to make the rest of the world scared of post-World War II America — a reality that still, very much, exists today. The reach and scope of World War II meant that practically no one could escape its influence, even safe at home, thousands of miles away from the nearest front.

This influence manifested itself in many ways, some good and some bad, and is an important part of understanding the United States during this pivotal moment in world history. Perhaps the most significant change that occurred in the United States as a result of World War II was the revitalization of the American economy. In total, the war generated some 17 million new jobs for the economy. In addition, living standards, which had plummeted during the s as the Depression wreaked havoc on the working class and sent many people to the poorhouse and bread lines, began to rise as more and more Americans — working for the first time in many years — could once again afford consumer goods that would have been considered pure luxuries in the thirties think clothes, decorations, specialty foods, and so on.

This resurgence helped build up the American economy into one that could continue to thrive even after the war ended. The massive economic mobilization brought on by the war meant United States factories needed workers for the war effort. But since the American military also needed soldiers, and fighting took precedence over working, factories often struggled to find men to work in them.

So, to respond to this labor shortage, women were encouraged to work in jobs previously considered suitable only for men. This represented a radical shift in the American working class, as women had never before participated in labor at such high levels. Factories were producing anything and everything the soldiers needed — clothes and uniforms to firearms, bullets, bombs, tires, knives, nuts, bolts, and so much more.

Funded by Congress, American industry set out to create and build everything the nation needed to win. Despite this progress, once the war concluded, most women who had been hired were let go and their jobs were given back to men.

But the role they played would never be forgotten, and this era would propel the movement for gender equality continuing forward. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the Germans declared war, the United States, which had always been a land of immigrants but also one that struggled to deal with its own cultural diversity, started turning inward and wondering if the threat of the enemy was closer than the distant shores of Europe and Asia. German, Italian, and Japanese Americans were all treated suspiciously and had their allegiance to the United States questioned, making a difficult immigrant experience all that much more challenging.

The United States government took things one step further in trying to seek out the enemy within.