World At War: World War II


Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor

·        On December 7, 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor knowing that it would bring the United States into World War II? For more information see Pearl Harbor Raid.

Home Front

War and the Economy

  • What effect did WW II have on the American economy? on government-business relations? on labor?
  • Who was Rosie the Riveter? In what way did women's lives change as a result of the war? What issues in particular were of concern to women? Women at War
  • Why was the Fair Employment Practices Committee necessary? In what way did the war improve the position of African-Americans? or did it?

Japanese-American Internment

  • Did Japanese-Americans constitute a threat to American security?
  • Why were Japanese-Americans interned? Internment of Japanese-Americans
  • What is the relationship between Pearl Harbor and the Japanese-American internment?
  • Was the internment a violation of rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, a case of the "legalization of racism? How was this issue finally resolved?

Wartime Diplomacy

·  Who were the Big Three? Why was the alliance variously referred to as the Grand Alliance, the Grand Coalition or the Strange Alliance?

·  What was the primary objective? [Defeat Germany unconditionally]

·  What did Stalin want? Churchill? Roosevelt?

·  What was Operation Overlord? [Normandy Invasion June 1944] What did it accomplish?

·  What was decided at the Yalta Conference? Why was Yalta so controversial? Which of the decisions made at Yalta later became Cold War issues? Yalta Conference

  • Why are the trials held at Nuremberg and Tokyo significant? What is the relationshiop between Nuremberg and the Holocaust? [Holocaust; The Nuremberg Trial]

The Dawn of the Atomic Age

·  What is the connection between the Potsdam conference and the Manhattan Project?

·  Why did the United States drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

·  What was the effect of atomic diplomacy on Soviet-American relations?

  • What is the continuing debate over the use of atomic bombs?

 

Lecture Notes: World War II

 

WWII.ppt

 

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